Guild Wars 2

Absolutely pigeon-holed. Strictly speaking, there are optimal ways of building any given character which exceed far beyond the rest of the combinations. This is often due to “dependency” traits/utility skills. I’ll say it straight up, too: Conditions don’t help this case, and are part of the reason why this game will never achieve a state where all builds and classes are equally viable unless every combination results in a sustaining amount of condition removal.

It’s also heavily fueled by the blatant discrepancies between sigils/runes. All of them should fetch similar prices or prices based upon rarity vs demand by how many people prefer the given style associated with certain runes and sigils. This isn’t the case currently because only a few select are even considered. There are some which some people have never even heard of because they’ve just remained worse on all levels than other given sets.

There are also balatant imbalances between gear combinations. Sets like Assassin’s are just strictly worse than Berserker’s, and with boon-stacking being so important in the meta, often times builds are able to just totally ignore what gear they should be using because they can compensate entirely for it by stacking boons. Boons fill holes in builds rather than augmenting new ones. I’d like to see buffs like Protection and Might turn into ones which better scale with builds rather than filling holes, such as nerfing their base effects and giving them additional ones, such as giving protection a scaling effect based upon toughness, and making might primarily a damage modifier such that DPS builds benefit from it proportionally. This turns boons into build augments which can fill small holes, but not just let a full tank deal as much damage as a full DPS because it has boon access.

I’d rather just see better condition removal on the heal skills. I understand they’re already strong relative to a lot of other classes’, but consider ways to improve condition cleansing a little bit without impacting major builds. We don’t need sustained removal unless we spec for it, but burst cleansing with our low health pool seems almost necessary. Torment and immobilize are massively-impairing conditions, and DoT’s have major effects on the low health pool thieves have with no means of condition cleansing elsewhere in their kit as a viable way to remove them. You pretty much either need to run huge regen effects and Withdraw to possibly counter the DoT’s, or use HiS. But this always still leaves thieves with torment. The ONLY ways to remove torment as a thief is through Shadowstep, Sword 2/Signet of Agility if it’s the only condition you have, and through the use of Shadow’s Embrace. Being the most effective condition against thieves, and being buffed to crazy levels in this next incoming patch (perma-25 torment mesmers), simply put there need to be better ways of negating some particularly-impactful conditions without having to build explicitly around it.

My only gripe is that P/D then just becomes even stronger, but the only alteratives I can think of would be to give all signets a 2-condition cleanse when traited through Signet Use, and similar effects for other utilities like traps and venoms.

The suggestion posed by evilapprentice isn’t a nerf, though. If anything, it’s a buff to the skilled thieves out there. SA via rejuv is so passive, and only putting the condition cleansing in one utility and in sitting in stealth pigeon-holes too many thieves into SA + Shadowstep, especially in this condi roaming meta.

AEFA.9035:

Ranger Shortbow changes:

Crossfire: now applies bleeding without planking.
old version: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Crossfire

Poison Volley: now pierces. update accuracy.

Quick Shot: now applies swiftness regardless. pet’s next attack inflict weakness.

Crippling Shot: increase cripple duration to 5seconds. Change description back to Shatter your foe’s dreams of becoming an adventurer with a single arrow to the knee.

Concussion Shot: same. give your pet attack of opportunity if hits. lower cool down reduction to 20s.

Crossfire would be wildly overpowered. The bleed-stacking rate is just too high if it applied every attack. They simply would have to nerf the bleeds if this were to go into effect.

Carighan.6758:

Lazze.9870:

No. No, no, no, no. Not another single target, ranged option. What are rifles and pistols supposed to offer that the two bows and the axe doesn’t already offer?

Huh? Who said anything about single-target, or even long ranged?
Engineer Rifle is a mobility/utility weapon, could easily make it something like that. Plus it’s AA is a line-AE.

But that’s just an example, I said nothing about which skills I’d like to see.

It’s less flavorful and the role is already largely fulfilled elsewhere. Staff support or even melee staff would be pretty crazy imho.

Would prefer to just move some of the condi removal elsewhere, honestly/give the class additional condition removal.

With such low base health and such limited clearing, it pigeon-holes too many thief builds into SA-Shadowstep for cleanses. I really think that needs to change.

But in all honesty, I think the issue is more about condition spamming. If there was simply less of it/it wasn’t as strong, less people would run SA on the basis that the cleanse wouldn’t be necessary and subsequently the rest of the tree wouldn’t be, either.

evilapprentice.6379:

Shadow arts does not need to be removed.

What it does need is to have it’s shift focused from “Sit in stealth for benefits” to “Engage in combat for benefits”.

At the moment, many of the most used SA traits give alot of incentive to sit in stealth for their benefits, regardless whether or not the current situation calls for sitting in stealth. That needs to change, and can be done easily.

Shadow’s Embrace – changed to “Remove 1 condition when you enter stealth. Remove 1 condition when you gain revealed.” Now an SA thief will mitigate conditions by staying in combat and weaving in and out of stealth, not by jumping into stealth and just sitting there.

Patience – I’ll be honest, I don’t have a great suggestion for this one, but it also need to change, partly because it incentivizes sitting in stealth, and partially because it’s buttkitten useless and nobody runs it. Perhaps something along the lines of “All CD’s tick 20% faster while revealed”, or something of the like.

Shadow Rejuvenation – changed to “Heal X when you enter stealth. Heal Y health per second while revealed”. Again, now a thief is healing by weaving in and out of stealth and fighting his opponent instead of by just sitting in stealth doing nothing. X and Y will obviously need to be playtested, since being healed while revealed is more powerful than healing while in stealth.

Resilience of shadow – changed to “Stealth effects you apply reduce incoming damage (30%). When you (and only you, not others) are revealed, reduce incoming damage by 15%.”

There you go – you now how an SA tree that’s useful in PvP and not annoying in WvW.

Awesome.

I absolutely hate SA with a passion and also believe that HiS and Withdraw need additional Torment removal since Torment was released after these skills and the dependency for thieves remaining mobile is crazy. It’s unfair that we absolutely must trait into a specific line (especially one gated by a terrible trait like Last Refuge) just for half-decent condition cleansing on the condition that most-affects us as an entire class.

I view SA as a crutch with far too much added utility. I’d like to see more of this utility distributed elsewhere and the class, and like you mentioned, having SA reward active, engage-based stealth use rather than a passive “sit back and heal/remain un-targetable while keeping the foe in combat” approach.

Seeing as they’re never going to properly balance the rest of them, they might as well just add new skills honestly. I’d rather have new content and things to freshen up the game than nothing at all.

My list?
Elementalist: Mainhand/offhand sword (The class lacks full melee DPS)
Engineer: Hammer/Hammer Kit (Because flavor)
Guardian: Mainhand/Offhand Axe (Nothing else really fits)
Mesmer: Mainhand/offhand Dagger (The class lacks close-quarters melee DPS aside from sword)
Necromancer: Mainhand Sword/Offhand Axe (To fulfill melee blood magic)
Ranger: Staff (The class needs a support/Warden weapon after it was designed)
Thief: Longbow (It needs a 1200-range ranged weapon/attack option, rifles are clumsy and the class has limited out-of-stealth/non-blindspam options. Allows for non-pet archers to have a class they want to play)
Warrior: Torch if anything? They really have so many options already but hammer is overly-dominant.

That being said, I am in full support of Thief + Engineer crossbow.

Guess I’ll do one since I’m bored enough. I’d say reasonably balanced.

Rune of Simplicity

1: +1% Damage
2: +2% Damage
3: +3% Damage
4: +4% Damage
5: +5% Damage
6: +10% Damage; Whenever you gain a boon, remove all other boons and all other previous stacks of that boon.

ANet really fails to understand a core concept:

Approximately 20-30% of all fantasy MMO players use archery as a preferred combat style.

So with longbow becoming somewhat viable and only existing on two classes, one of which does not play at all like an archer, it’s not at all surprising why so many people are playing the class with said build. Not to mention all the FoTM’ers using RF specs for easy burst combos.

lorndarken.3702:

that is because condition cleanse is so insane right now . anet put one to many cleanse in the game and not enough sustain for conditions . other mmos don’t face this problem because they use the holy trinity where as this game does not . it just runs the BS Trinity

Not so much this as there are just a few specific classes and builds which have far too much, and others which have far too little. Condition cleanses need to be normalized in utility.

Not really sure if I agree that necros don’t have a lot of “escapes.”

Yes, they don’t have something like thief shortbow 5, greatsword rush, or other in-combat movement skills used without a target, but necros have substantial access to CC and movement-impairing effects, most notably, fear. Being able to repeatedly fear someone off of you before they can land substantial damage while blowing their cooldowns will ultimately net the necro positive distance gained, which can be maintained and further expanded upon through cripples, chills, immobs, and so on.

The necro doesn’t carry much risk because as someone above stated, the class has no direct counters; only the player is responsible for making mistakes during combat which will cause him to lose. Giving the necro the ability to escape on the level of a thief would be crazy considering it would just be a mechanism that would allow for the class to be even more difficult to shut down since it would not punish poor play which some other classes or builds have to capitalize on in order to beat them.

In competitive large-scale WvW, this is not the kind of effect necessary for the class to move into the meta. It’s far too specific and does not actually have much of an impact on the fight. Your periphery should already have counter-periphery and should be primarily focused on supporting the front-line while being good enough to position in ways to not let thieves engage rather than wasting utilities on something that may or may not have an effect on the encounter.

Ultimately, as long as rangers cannot perform on the levels of eles and necros in terms of either group support or disabling effects and AOE damage (or be able to mix aspects of both without taking major hits elsewhere), the class will not have relevance in the WvW meta.

Atherakhia.4086:

I think they approached the reveal thing in the wrong way. They probably should have always been pulsing fields on the ground but instead of applying long duration revealed to the thief, they simply took them out of stealth forcing the Thief to blow a cooldown/initiative on restealthing.

Dingdingding!

Honestly, revealed should never be something which can just be applied to someone. Forcing a thief into revealed pretty much just says “Oh, you’re not allowed to deal damage or get essential utility effects, now.” Revealing effects should have just created a visibility indicator, not force the revealed effect.

MonMalthias.4763:

Text worth reading

Oh my golly gosh.

This post (sadly too long to quote) is so incredibly true and worded so beautifully that it deserves more attention than the entire rest of this thread’s content. If I recall correctly, I believe I also stated something like this as well for one of you other analyses which is the possible contender in question

Please, do make another thread with this if you haven’t already. I would like to further endorse this and try to give it the attention it deserves.

And it has been refused. Whether or not it is easy is irrelevant because ANet developers have literally stated to the community directly after these suggestions have been made that they are not happening for creative reasons. And this is the sole and only reason. It has nothing to do with balance, game mechanics, or programming restrictions.

Which is subsequently why the ranger will never be used, and in its usefulness will only find itself situationally just as effective (if not just a little bit moreso) than any other given class.

It is why the ranger is not played. It is why the ranger is not OP, or even at all strong as a class regardless of how high the numbers get buffed while their baseline damage remains lower, pets remain a dependency, and their supportive abilities are sub-par because of the “benefit” of a second combat entity. Only if the numbers get increased so far beyond the other classes would the ranger find itself used in many applications, but this won’t happen (and nobody hopes it does) because then obviously the class would factually be overpowered.

Another thread. Lol.

A lot of the new/bad players are the ones playing LB ranger. The damage being easy to execute is enough of a boost. This will just make the problem worse by making the noobs stronger and require less skill to be effective with. This also encourages lower-skilled play at low tiers. All this suggestion does is perpetuate the problem of low-tier baddy play/reliance on ineffective combo use which becomes further punishing later on, and fuel more complaints about “overpowered” kit setups which are the result of disproportionate skill : result requirements which are only punctuated by unnecessary stat buffs.

I play a glassy signet D/D stab thief and have absolutely no problems whatsoever with longbow rangers. Actually, they’re the easiest to kill of literally every class and every build in the game. One dodge roll is enough not to die. They manage to PBS you? Stunbreak and dodge roll. Follow up by tossing down a heal, walk up, and kill them in three hits. Most don’t even know how to play in melee and those that do have been playing the build long before the recent buffs and thus the outcome of the battle is no longer just solely decided on class but an actual representation of how good they are at utilizing an initial ranged advantage and re-gaining that advantage or keeping track of a fast-moving melee opponent.

S/D and S/T ranger, on the other hand… those builds are absolutely terrifying, and I only attempt to ever engage on them unless I’m desperate, they’re crippled/on cooldowns, or know they’re not at all good players. A good S/T ranger will beat me 10/10 times.

So now you’ve finally understood why rangers are not used in anything?

But sorry, ANet won’t do this. They’ve explicitly said this and have said they do not want to change the pets on any level regarding mechanics in the CDI. Pets pose numerous problems (bouncing projectiles for one), but ANet has refused outright to make any of these desired changes because they like the “theme” of the ranger needing the pet to fight.

As can mesmers?

Harper.4173:

Also from general experience teleport skills are more reliable than the current in game version of BC.

Dunno if I agree with this. Have you tried thief recently on anything other than flat ground? Using a blink from uneven ground honestly feels less reliable and more punishing when it fails than BC missing, since it wastes effects/timers and doesn’t actually move you at all.

It depends on what you do and your build. I can only really speak for dagger mainhand.

WvW: Full Valk (extra needed survivability).

PvE: Full Berserker (There’s no better for DPS, no matter how you look at it).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

DeceiverX.8361:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

DeceiverX.8361:

Advent.6193:

Food durations. I think it was Carighan who said WvW’d be better off if the +/- 40% foods were chopped to ~10%. I can see where he’s coming from, honestly.

You’d actually be better off with condition duration food not existing at all from a damage perspective. As it currently stands, a fight with + and – condition duration food actually nets less condition damage than using no food at all, since the negative is applied after the positive and is merely multiplicative, I.E., 1 * 1.4 * .6 = .924. This will cause condition users in many cases an entire tick less of damage, which would let condi users simply use better food options for becoming more durable or making ticks hit harder. It’s also part of the reason why ticks and removal can’t just be buffed due to stacking problems, since one little modifier does crazy things, and that modifier can’t be balanced around.

Nope. + Condition duration and – Condition duration are added on, not multiplied. The 40% duration increase and 40% duration decrease cancel each other out perfectly.

Are you positive about this, or is base condi duration just getting you above the needed threshholds to keep that one stack ticking?

Completely certain. All + and – condition duration modifiers add together, then multiply the base duration for the final result.

Either way, the foods cut down condi user damage throughputs in most scenarios kitten many find themselves locked into -condi food since +condi food is so OP, preventing per-tick damage from scaling and/or condition base buffs.

evilapprentice.6379:

NinjaEd.3946:

evilapprentice.6379:

Einlanzer.1627:

kitten .9460:

Einlanzer.1627:

No thank you.

Frankly, making DB a power skill wouldn’t make sense, since D/D is already fully functional as a power set and the only other melee option is power-only.

It doesn’t need to be changed, except for maybe tuning the evade a bit. It functions very effectively as a bleed stacker and allows D/D to have a little versatility. It’s also very flavorful. Anyone who thinks it’s weak or useless doesn’t know what they’re talking about and is just stuck in myopic perpetual backstab mode.

DB is a terrible skill I’ve mained thief since day 1… it is just bad, glad you can find some joy in 3 spamming on immobile AI though.

Try using it against another player in yolo or team queue or even a dungeon and watch as the group laughs at you and expect a swift kick.

Doesn’t make sense to have it condi based on an obvious power set.

Except it isn’t. Layering it on top of Caltrops is the most effective bleed stacking in the game, hands down.

For things too stupid to walk out of the caltrop AoE and incapable of cleanses, IE things that nearly any spec would work on. Just because something works on dumbkitten AI and kittenty players does not make it viable or well designed. If you still want to mindlessly spam 3 in PvE, you can always roll S/P.

And yes, it does. It’s called versatility. Stop being myopic.

No, it’s called poor design – the set is too disjointed. For any specific weapon skill, you’re only ever using one set of DPS stats – every time you DB, every point you have in power, precision and ferocity is wasted. Every time you use any other skill in the set, your condition damage is absolutely worthless. This is a great example of poor design.

DB doesn’t need to function as another hard hitter for your power/prec/ferocity to be “useful” there. It just needs to evade reliably and be a skill shot. Makes “3 spam” harder, the aftercast will make you vulnerable but atleast you would be able to time your initiative evasion rather than do a ballerina dance as they strike a hammer down on you.

No, DB doesn’t need to change to benefit from Power/feorcity, but D/D does need a change. As it stands, D/D is a subpar power set, an extremely subpar “hybrid” set, and worthless as a condition set. It’s not good for anyone.

I’m all for turning it into a real hybrid set (some copy/pasta below on the subject), but pretending like D/D is fine the way it is or would be fixed with minor tweaks to DB while ignoring the fact that every other weapon skill in D/D has no use for condition damage is naive.

DeceiverX.8361:

That said, I would like to see some of D/D’s condition application tweaked. I dislike the prospect of 3spam bleedfest while evading. It’s great for weapons to have two ways of dealing damage, but this set handles it poorly. Would much rather see conditions attached to a mixture of DB and Dancing Dagger and a little more potency added, just to make the build a bit more diverse and a bit more functional with less 3-spam, because admit it, Heartseeker/QZ+SotW+RF bearbow ranger/HB war spam is the same thing.

Here’s a copy paste of something I said earlier in this thread -

“Want to see what D/D would look like if it was actually a hybrid set?

Double strike – reduce damage scaling, add a 2-3s Bleed to each swing.
Front stab (backstab from the front) – reduce damage scaling alot, add damaging conditions to compensate
DB – lower bleed duration some, buff direct damage some
Dancing Dagger – add torment, increase Init cost by 1.

There. That’s what a hybrid set looks like (at least compared to what we currently have in D/D). You have multiple options for dealing condition damage – you have multiple options for dealing direct damage – the skills that don’t have a way to deal both types of damage (wild strike, HS, CnD) at least have other generally useful side effects (endurance gain, gap closing, stealth which opens up your dual use BS)."

Is that suggestion perfect? Probably not, but it would turn D/D into a functional hybrid set without breaking D/P, S/D, or P/D.

It would break D/x dps/stab builds in PvP and ruin thieves in PvE, though. If anything it jut removes diversity from within the set by just saying “YOU NOW PLAY HYBRID” Actually, I would just straight up stop playing thief if that was implemented, no offense.

Too many rangers using longbow? Huh. I wonder what kind of far-fetched solution is needed to resolve this seeming lack of choice…

Since I know they can’t take a hint:
Give another medium/light DPS build longbow/archery. Now the ~20-30% or so of the fantasy MMO demographic desiring a ranged archer combat class is appeased. Now there are less longbow rangers since another class can assume the role.

Mind-blowing, really. Not like a lot of these other classes are down on weapon combinations, either.

It really doesn’t, though.

A friend of mine literally facerolled his keyboard playing engi once to prove a point – literally, I mean rolling his forehead on the left side of his keyboard while blindly moving the mouse to cast his abilities, and found himself winning more than half of his roaming encounters in WvW.

I’m not going to try and toot my horn being a thief main or anything; actually, I find myself having the most struggles playing my DPS warrior of my six professions at 80, but I genuinely believe that engi and P/D thief are on the lowest of the list when it comes to required skill.

^Nailed it. DB doesn’t need any kind of damage or ability adjustment as much as it needs reworked evasion frames. DB is hard to counterplay, since the frames are so unpredictable (by reaction time they’re in the evade frames), and offers the thief no counterplay since you need to react before an attack is made since it’ll connect before you hit the evade frames.

That said, I would like to see some of D/D’s condition application tweaked. I dislike the prospect of 3spam bleedfest while evading. It’s great for weapons to have two ways of dealing damage, but this set handles it poorly. Would much rather see conditions attached to a mixture of DB and Dancing Dagger and a little more potency added, just to make the build a bit more diverse and a bit more functional with less 3-spam, because admit it, Heartseeker/QZ+SotW+RF bearbow ranger/HB war spam is the same thing.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

DeceiverX.8361:

Advent.6193:

Food durations. I think it was Carighan who said WvW’d be better off if the +/- 40% foods were chopped to ~10%. I can see where he’s coming from, honestly.

You’d actually be better off with condition duration food not existing at all from a damage perspective. As it currently stands, a fight with + and – condition duration food actually nets less condition damage than using no food at all, since the negative is applied after the positive and is merely multiplicative, I.E., 1 * 1.4 * .6 = .924. This will cause condition users in many cases an entire tick less of damage, which would let condi users simply use better food options for becoming more durable or making ticks hit harder. It’s also part of the reason why ticks and removal can’t just be buffed due to stacking problems, since one little modifier does crazy things, and that modifier can’t be balanced around.

Nope. + Condition duration and – Condition duration are added on, not multiplied. The 40% duration increase and 40% duration decrease cancel each other out perfectly.

Are you positive about this, or is base condi duration just getting you above the needed threshholds to keep that one stack ticking?

I was thinking of a relatively easy fix: Buff Venom base application amounts/allow for training into sufficiently-higher stacks, and have that be the total pool shared by all nearby party members (so they are not spent on other random people who are just close by/running by); I.E., solo venom thief gains all of the venom abilities himself anyways buffing solo venom uptime considerably), but shared would lead to faster-stacked effects with no impact on the full-party utility and better venom burst since only one venom can be applied at once for Leeching Venoms, anyways.

Kittened thread necro-ers making my posts superfluous ._.

I think it’s meant to be a support-oriented spec. The problem lies in that the support side of VShare is kind of bad. It offers some damage, yea, but doesn’t really fill any support gaps otherwise, and this damage is on a high cooldown that detracts from the thief, making the build counterable without needing any explicit counters.

I recently started feeling kind of the same as OP, though, but I think it has to do largely with playing so much thief. That said, we really do need some more weapon types/configurations, as gameplay/sets are getting stale for everyone.

Einlanzer.1627:

God there is so much misinformation in this thread. The main two are summarized here:

A.) Thieves are not offensively stronger than other classes. In fact, their skills have lower coefficients across the board to compensate for their ability to spam. However, the spamming only affects burst DPS, their sustained DPS is the same as or even slightly weaker than other classes due to the lower coefficients. This is mostly why you see so many Thieves running glass cannon builds, because they have to to play off the only strength the class has – burst DPS. The combination of so-so sustained DPS, very poor attrition, and lack of good thread reduction/damage mitigation makes Thief one of the hardest classes to play in open-world PvE and in dungeons.

B.) Stealth does not reduce threat anymore. Smoke Bomb in the downed state is so brokenly useless in PvE that it’s actually laughable. I have played every class in PvE and the Thief’s downed state is easily the worst for both getting a rally and surviving for enough time to get some assistance. Some others are great (Warrior, Ranger, Mesmer), but all others have skills that are at least situationally useful and can usually do appreciable damage.

And I think you’re a pretty large source of it. Recently there were numbers posted after the 9/9 patch about PvE DPS. All of the classes, under absolute optimal performances were recorded and compared, and Thief was declared as the #1 DPS class under berserker gear, even over Ele FGS. How that actually works out, though, is disputed, as many argue the Ele has better uptime in combat due to the inherently better durability via water attunement effects as well as possible multi-procs of FGS and IB. Does that mean that it alone provides more DPS than the difference made by a warrior with banners? No. It does mean, however, that if your party has the support damage portion already handled, the thieves are on the top of the ladder.

As far as downed state, the damage it provides is absolutely incredible with built-in AOE tagging. This makes rallying quite easy, meanwhile allowing for a teleport reposition and a blind /stealth. Its damage is designed for PvE, and the rest is designed for PvP. Thief has one of the best downed states in PvP for this reason. Additionally, a good thief won’t get downed. If you’re downing frequently, get better or rethink your build.

It isn’t on D/D, either.

Actually, it’s less so for D/D than D/P.

NICENIKESHOE.7128:

Kitten its a shame that I sold my torment runes couple of months ago.

I think the solution to your problem is to add more torment cleanse to those classes DeceiverX. Many people who theorycraft a bit knows the burst nature of Miam works against stacking conditions. The shatter CD and sacrificing clone death/bleed crit only make miam builds getting overwhelmed by majority of builds that has “remove x conditions”. The exchange nature of shatter means you lack covering conditions while you desperately tries to protect those torment stacks, and this will continue to happen even after they introduce two stacks per clone. The only difference here for condi shatter against “remove x conditions classes” is at least now they can deal some form of damage. Having those condition-specific cleansing to remove torment will allow both condi shatter and classes that were countered by torment to thrive.

Btw I’m curious as to why the duration shown in build editor exceeds 100% cap, even when the total torment duration % is below it? xD

When it gets suggested, people often freak out. The reasoning is that because you can’t also just give some of these classes/specs inherently more removal since SOME specs allow for a lot of it, but it requires explicit building against it. I believe that Thieves suffer from this the most, since their condition removal comes from one of only a few places:

HiS: DoT conditions except for torment.
Withdraw: All movement-impairing conditions (making torment’s effectiveness increase further since the class’s design is mobility and not stopping moving)
Shadowstep: This ability is fantastic. But it’s also needed possibly as a stunbreaker or engage/disengage tool. It’s so good that it also finds itself in almost every thief build.
Pain Response: An okay trait. It only removes the pre-torment DoT conditions, but it’s also a very easy trigger (75% hp), and is totally involuntary and will proc even if no conditions are currently on the thief.
Shadow’s Embrace: The only actually good condition removal method. But this requires a trait investment and is only viable on certain weapon setups.

So thief utilities aren’t diverse (as mentioned in RU23). Players use Shadowstep because it’s good and fills a lot of holes, though mostly for cleansing, Refuge for condition cleansing/general stealth, and infiltrator’s signet for a gap-close/stunbreak on a lower cooldown.

So when you make say, a SA thief, all of these can come together via a x/x/2+/4+/x build using the necessary utilities. Great. Actually, this mix is extremely strong and very difficult to beat. Except general-purpose condition cleansing for torment therefore requires a 6-point trait investment, dedicated utilities with fairly high cooldowns, and certain weapon combinations. When the access was low, it was not a problem, since okay, some conditions can get through. Now, though, (I just created a build to see), a single mesmer can permanently maintain 25 stacks of torment in WvW. I have scepter 2 with a shatter combo alone dealing 39k damage, meanwhile the build has 23k health and 2.6k armor, multiple condition removal effects on a low cooldown, stealth, burning, blindness, vulnerability, and confusion access. That’s absolutely stupid.

It makes more sense to me that some of the power from the above-mentioned “necessary” abilities just doesn’t get transferred say, to some of the heal skills which already remove the DoT/movement-impairing conditions, since they have lower cooldowns and already are used for condition removal/healing anyways.

Advent.6193:

Food durations. I think it was Carighan who said WvW’d be better off if the +/- 40% foods were chopped to ~10%. I can see where he’s coming from, honestly.

You’d actually be better off with condition duration food not existing at all from a damage perspective. As it currently stands, a fight with + and – condition duration food actually nets less condition damage than using no food at all, since the negative is applied after the positive and is merely multiplicative, I.E., 1 * 1.4 * .6 = .924. This will cause condition users in many cases an entire tick less of damage, which would let condi users simply use better food options for becoming more durable or making ticks hit harder. It’s also part of the reason why ticks and removal can’t just be buffed due to stacking problems, since one little modifier does crazy things, and that modifier can’t be balanced around.

At the rate that we’re seeing torment increase in application, yes. When pairing SE and Shadowstep with HiS, there is a lot of condition cleansing going on, but these are the only available ways to remove torment. Also, my apologies. I was working with an out-dated tooltip (I do main thief but to not use Shadowstep), which stated that stuns are broken and three conditions are cured on both parts of the skill. Since it only cures three as it stands, it doesn’t need a rework. Edited/Fixed original post.

The fact that torment in general cannot be removed except from SE and Shadowstep (I proposed no changes to sword since it doesn’t deserve any changes as the removal is part of the benefit of using sword and is not build-restrictive) is in itself a problem. Mechanisms used to negate damage sources should negate damage sources. With access to torment on the rise, there is little reason to consider adapting the heals to accommodate for this. It also prevents thieves from gaining access to far too much condition removal if the access is just increased. I’m not sure if you looked at the incoming changes, but mesmers will now be able to apply a near constant twelve stacks of torment without trying, or if you’re really crazy, a near-constant 20+. Effectively what you’re saying is that you need to use Shadow Arts or Shadowstep to have even some kind of hope to kill a good one.

By saying “just invest two points in SA” you’re effectively saying that if the thief only had access to one dodge, it would be okay if you had to invest two points into a specific trait line that offers no use beyond giving the player a second dodge to make them comparable to other classes, while also having the 1 pt trait be uncontrollable and that counteracts the design philosophy of the trait/can kill the user.

zapv.8051:

Shatter condition mesmer with torment runes incoming, 6 stacks for 12 seconds is like 15k damage when moving :O plus another 5 from scepter block and 6 stacks of confusion from F2.

Exactly. And some classes don’t have access to removing these conditions without speccing for this removal explicitly/going out of their way. Conditions are passive on anything to do with clones on mesmer just because they’re auto-pilot self-destruction mechanisms that apply their effect to everything except ranged-users which have to waste time killing them before they get to them.

I’d much rather just see clones get their own attack rotations which apply the effects every so often rather than on death/shatter, seeing as the class already does so much damage that way and has ridiculous condition application in the form of the two most difficult to remove and most powerful damaging conditions.

Torment is a cool condition. Really, it brings an interesting mechanic to the table and allows to an extent a form of bypassing the condition stack cap.

There is, however, a massive problem with torment: Its implementation, coming out after the game’s release, has allowed for some intended functionality of certain condition cleanses to be effectively made less effective than they need to be, or how they were intended and designed to function. This is no more apparent than on the thief class – which aside from Shadowtep – has very strict condition removal utility skills, and with the game pushing even more torment, makes the thief even more dependent on certain and specific setups. Most people will agrue that Shadowstep is almost required due to its condition removal, sword’s infiltrator’s strike’s condition cleanse makes the weapon gain a lot of utility otherwise missing from the class, and that Shadow Arts is almost necessary for any thief using dagger mainhand.

The problem with torment is that the thief class is dependent on moving constantly – and this is an intended design principle of the class according to ANet. So it is almost guaranteed that the target, if a thief, will eat the maximum applied damage, which is a substantial number due to thief’s inherently low base HP. Torment is also not easily cleansed by the default heals of the thief class, and has arguably the best condition damage scaling with the highest reliability, as confusion can be negated by not attacking, which any other class which may lack substantial removal can succeed in doing.

So what is the proposed solution? It’s relatively simple: Allow for the Hide in Shadows and Withdraw heal skills to also cure torment, while removing the condition cleansing on the second half of Shadowstep, and reducing the condition cleansing on Shadow’s Embrace to apply once every 4 seconds instead of 3.

Why? Because it follows the design principles of the skills themselves. Hide and Shadows, before Torment was released, was designed to remove all DoT conditions. Torment is a DoT effect, so I see no reason why it wasn’t added to this list. Doing so allows for thieves to spec into HiS for a condition cleanse which is important on low-health classes as many other heals offer, while taking other utilies, weapons, or traits.

With Withdraw, the skill is designed to recover mobility by removing mobility-impairing conditons and allow for the thief to keep moving. As it stands, torment stays in effect, therefore making movement painful. The “counter” to torment is standing still, and this utility is supposed to counter conditions designed at impairing mobility.

EDIT: The following about Shadowstep has been removed from the suggestion (I was using an out-dated skill fact as the basis for the assertion as I personally do not run Shadowstep).

And for Shadowstep? Remove the condition cleanse on return. Shadowstep is just too good and fills all of the holes of the class’s defense. It’s too good because it blinks once for gap-close, twice as an avoidance mechanic, enables resets, breaks stuns twice, and cures six conditions on a 50 second cooldown (Was referencing an outdated skill fact). These effects are mandatory for functional classes in PvP environments, but many other classes boast utilities which offer these effects and others throughout an array of skills which are all each individually condusive to a given build. Reducing the dependency on Shadowstep and buffing the class where it needs it elsewhere in order to nerf it increases diversity within the classes and enables more widespread use of skills without just needing to buff numbers.

For Shadow’s Embrace, I understand that stealth only has a base duration of three seconds. But that’s the point. Being able to maintain condition removal via stealth should be more than a 2pt investment, especially when removal by heals is being increased. There are plenty of other good 2pt traits in SA anyways, further increasing diversity. This can make Shadow Arts a real defensive line with real trait decisions, but not making it necessary for good removal on stealth-attack builds, opening the doors to more alternaties like venoms, signets, tricks, traps, and so on.

kitten . This condition is getting out of hand, especially with the difficulty of cleansing it.

PvP/WvW. Pretty much every other MMO is the same way, but just normally takes much longer to reach the level cap, no?

Jason Segel.2908:

Why is there a bleed stack limit in PVE?

There actually isn’t a reason. Arenanet has actually never said why, they have also never said why poison and burning do not stack in intensity.

Actually, there is a reason why the cap is 25, and they have stated why.

It’s because each individual condition and all timers associated with each stack need to be individully handled. This makes handling conditions require a lot of resources on the back-end, seeing as condition handling can’t be done client-side due to the very real possibility then of people hacking the damage/stack values.

For example:
A mob receives a stack of bleeding each auto from a condition user.
Therefore it needs to calculate, for any given attack:
1.) The autoattack damage. This is some kind of function call based upon the attacker’s stats and the mob’s toughness, with a function for determining if it’s a critical attack, passed as a boolean.

2.) Condition damage applied. Another function call which needs to gain the attack/condition information and the number of stacks applied.

3.) Looping/timer for each individual tick, which doesn’t occur during one universal tick, therefore increasing the amount of resources needed to tick linearly for each stack. Additionally, there is almost definitely a get method used to determine the target’s condition duration modifiers, as well as the attacker’s, therefore requiring two additional function calls as well for each application to modify the expiration time.

4.) Any extra bookkeeping associated with these functions or passing variables, etc. I can tell you now there’s substantially more compution going on as well.

So really, maintaining conditions themselves is a demanding task on hardware, especially when operating under the pretense that function calls require better hardware and are inherently slower.

As to why poison and burning don’t? That’s just because that’s how the conditions were designed. Instead of adding stacks of intensity, the duration stacks. Burning is meant more for a DoT than bleeding, and Poison is designed as a utility condition for its heal cut.

The thing is, the only way to let conditions work in PvE would be to remove the cap. But we can’t do this, and with how incredibly strong they are in PvP environments, just buffing them is out of the question. An engi yesterday within seconds and not even needing to actually try hitting me placed seven stacks of confusion, nine bleeding, and extended burning on me. When your condition removal is on cooldown, which is easy to have happen when so many people use it, just being in the vicinity of some classes can actually just straight up kill you. Condition styles, as well as the gear itself, are also inherently stronger than normal damage sources in small groups due to the dependence on only two stats with greater than if not superior burst damage in PvP. They’re not used on the basis that conditions are not a scalable form of combat and therefore fall off in GvG/PvE.

Don’t believe me that condition gear and builds offer a little too much? Watch the video. The thief has tools to deal damage via utilities, but so do most other classes. Engies are the same, if not better.

If you’re a completionist the reward is in achieving completion.

It’s why I’ve been here since launch and still have unexplored waypoints/large chunks of maps, etc. It’s not my style, and I have no need and I am happy that I have no need to explore via a long grind every little tiny detail of every map. Games that reward too much for doing things like that in my honest opinion are boring. Content is something which should be designed to be explored when the need arises, or when the player feels motivated to do so just for the sake of doing so. I’ll get there eventually if I have to. Otherwise, I’m doing what I want to be doing, not grinding away at something I deem boring because it gives me money/items/etc. which have a meaningful impact on the game or my performance as a player. It also extends the longevity of the game’s content. There are things I might discover a year from now for the first time that have been around since launch. I’m cool with being out of the know of world lore for this reason.

EXP rewards could go up, sure, but there’s no reason to reward map completion/exploration on a static and unchanging world. Asking or significant rewards is like going out into the woods expecting to find lost treasures. Ultimately, the exploration, hike, or whatever may be the reason for doing so should be the reward.

Frankly, I suggested in the CDI (before any of this was implemented) that Ranger’s longbow 1 should just see a 50 (or 100, can’t remember) percent increase in velocity to make the weapon functional and allow power-built longbow rangers to also use Signets of Power, since melee ones were capable of doing so with no drawbacks/dependencies on slow-moving projectiles. This would then make the ranger need to choose between signet power builds spewing SotW-boosted attacks, or vuln-stacking/critting ones using stealth from Remorseless.

Seems they took my suggestion to heart to an extent but twisted it, as my suggestion would have opened up more doors for diversity and improved the class better as a whole, rather than just making signet-longbow the only option available for longbow players.

But I digress :\

@OP:

Your lack of knowledge probably stems from the lack of care you put in.

I.E., if you’re only going to play once every two weeks for a little while and are still going to focus primarily on another game entirely, you’re not going to learn about the nuances of the game. GW2 is another full-fledged AAA title with an incredible amount of content and focus on keeping a lot of the content under the radar to appeal to those who like to explore and learn more about the world. Acronyms, traits, and the whole nine yards of game mechanics come in time and experience when playing. And a lot of it is level-gated which imho adds to complexity since there are things you know you get access to at some point but don’t know when or what they mean.

Ultimately, you’re just going to need to play a little more, care a little more and try exploring and considering the game as more than just a temporary time-killer if you really want to learn about it. It sounds harsh, but a lot of the questions you have are really trivial and are given to you directly while playing. You’ve probably just since forgotten due to a lack of playtime/routine and are basing your game knowledge off of another totally different game.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not jumping on you. Your initial post (from my standpoint) carried an air of that the trait might provide too much. I just disagreed with that stance since I thought it was what you were alluding to.

But melee pressure and repositions trump RtW’s bonus and allows for the projectiles not to hit due to projectile geometry handling.

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m sorry, but why isn’t SoS fine to begin with? Honestly, it’s the only signet I think actually works and is balanced overall.

Because then a pew-pew build actually carries a real risk like most other GC builds have.

I love my longbow ranger, but I’m sorry, this signet makes LB-RF so incredibly forgiving and easy to just faceroll with. Frankly, I prefer not to have my class be the target of the “easymode” stigma that say, warriors have carried for so long. Buffs are great, and the ranger deserved one, but I think this utility in particular is a little excessive. Is SotW? Sure, when looking at the buffs it provides alone. But at least you’re vulnerable to your opponent playing smart when you use that, and it can be interrupted. Want to have a defensive mechanism? The player should need to swap to another weapon and use stealth repositions better, or not have gotten into that kind of situation in the first place. I recently fought a full-signet-stab thief on my ranger in a 1v1. I run full glass and stopped using SoS because it felt cheap. What did I do? Twitch-swapped GS4 when he got to 1600 range and began engaging off of infil Signet + steal, and then proceeded to CC lock him and kill him. I could have also just pressed SoS and not have had to worry and just kill him with RF. SoS is a press-button-to-avoid-trauma utility and further encourages the use of bearbow while allowing for almost a full reset on RF. It promotes lower-skill play and discourages smart use of pet bodyblocking and rewarding rangers using their weapon skills smarter.

I see nothing inherently wrong with it and agree with the change entirely since the shots won’t even fire/will not hit anything if the target within melee range moves around your character while close (breaking the required angle for the projectile to track). Most other ranged weapons, if not all of them, also prevent side-stepping. The only attacks you can side-step are melee ones, but that also usually means in a melee vs melee fight, neither players are dealing damage to each other.

Seeing as RtW only really affects the auto-attack, and nobody’s complained about it, I see no reason to try and fix what isn’t broken.

Do recall that this trait is a 6pt investment in the power line just to make a weapon functional, and it subsequently overrides another trait point. It’s like saying HK is overpowered on thief since it lets backstab (unique to one weapon) always guarantee its maximum damage with already-high scaling.

It’s nothing new that RtW guarantees the attack to hit if the hitbox timing on the animation isn’t avoided. This reliability increase alone is what allows for LB to be a functional weapon.

Inb4 senseless defense about how condi dire (thief) isn’t OP.

Sorry, but there is way too much inherent durability in the set.

Pich.8391:

This in theory could work if maybe you switch the bow with p/p and have traits for extra initiative to just unload like hell. Also you will have the extra hold from the 2 of the p/p.

Shortbow stealth attack is an immob.