Guild Wars 2

Prysin.8542:

actually if you do a FULL stack, FULL bloodlust + BL Bloodlust (3) Zerker ranger, with signets and the right pet, your rapid fire can IN THEORY, if everything hits, crits and procs, deal 21.2k. On a full glass light armor class that is.

That is considering EVERY HIT deals its maximum crit damage (around 1.7k) + air fire proc and 5 stacks of might.

Now, you cannot test this damage in HotM because you cannot get guard stacks, bloodlust and BL bloodlust all at once. But i did do the math (very roughly) and thanks to 3x 10%, 1x 5%, 1x 25% boosters we can reach these numbers.

However the cost for pulling this off is blowing EVERY COOLDOWN KNOWN TO MANKIND. Resulting in the easiest kill known to WvW roamers short of armor-less uplevels.

In short. Rapid fire is amazing, In contrast – Maul (Greatsword #2) can hit for OVER 33k when set up right…. so well, nothing special with RF and ranger having insane spike damage.

EDIT: likelihood of this sort of RF ever landing on you is 10 in 10 squared.

I wasn’t including sigils since those aren’t a part of RF’s actual damage throughputs and can remain constant across all classes/builds. So alright, you’re near like 17k at absolute peak performance under the assumption the ranger manages 100% crit chance and all those conditionals – and of course, it also depends on the build the ranger has for power scaling, etc.

Better put, a reasonably viable ranger build will be capping around 13-15k :P

niconori.7235:

Thank you for this very unbiased post about thief. You didn’t down play the class and provide wonderful insight about thief. This is lovely to read. The forums need more people like you.

Thank you. We’re comparing burst builds here. Don’t get me wrong, the damage aspect of the class can be incredible, but it comes at an immense cost. I think a lot of people fail to recognize how the thief is a very polarized profession in that it does only certain things very well dependent on the build’s intended use and sucks at the rest, but what it builds into doing well, it by far excels at.

niconori.7235:

stof.9341:

DeceiverX.8361:

And the full CnD combo usually includes mug which yields a total ratio of 1 + 1.5 + 2.4 = 4.9 before considering the effects of might and other readily-accessible boons thieves have access to in order to increase damage. It doesn’t matter that steal has a 30 second cooldown because your target is DEAD. One also needs to consider how burst thieves have access to 16 stacks of might for 10s instantly.

You cannot include Mug coefficient like that. Mug cannot crit.

look at his screen shot. 2237 mug dmg and 5438 C&D dmg.

if C&D is a 1.5 coefficient skill, that mug has a coefficient of around 0.6… wait a minute, a skill that actually actually cant crit dealt a dmg that has fero factored in!? what? lol.

and he goes on to mug for 5357 next.

Neither CnD critted, either. Those were non-critical strikes, thus why the mug damage looks high. If mug could crit as it used to the damage as it is in a lot of cases would be something like 10k + 10k + 20k. I just got unlucky on both since ToTC takes my crit rate to over 70% on my thief QQ and the only other backstabs I have done over the 20k mark since ferocity have been in the heat of larger-scale fights where I could just never get a screenshot.

I have two of them and have been playing one of them for over two years now.

I see you’ve applied your 20 stacks of vuln from the class mechanics already. I’m waiting where the rest of the needed 50% of your damage is going to come from.

But I guess it’s also too much to expect a real player would dodge 3/4 of the RF or that defenses on tanks are inherently higher in wvw despite the increased damage yields.

Yeah it’s too hard to learn to counterplay so instead just nerf RF since people don’t understand what burst builds are and can’t handle being able to dodge a large portion of the incoming damage by pressing a button and then just walking up and using some gap closing methods in the meantime.

The damage hasn’t changed. Literally, the numbers you did in hotm during your tests are the same they’ve always been. This is not a new concept. The hits are just coming faster.

^Arguably the classes are more balanced in WvW than in sPvP.

Like no, really. GWEN blob meta aside, the fights and matchups are pretty fair. Damage is higher, but in terms of what’s viable and to what extent, the list is far more extensive than in sPvP.

Immob should prevent movement, but imho, should not prevent dodges. This way people can still get trapped in an effect/AOE but can avoid major bombs from other sources they might already have seen coming but can’t due to the condition getting in the way.

Historically speaking, thieves have been the most nerfed class in the game, many of such nerfs were unwarranted. Rangers were just never good except for very early on/BWEs and were nerfed due to crazy DPS coming from the pets. This is effectively the first major buff to the class since launch.

Just pointing that out.

Lol.

I’m gonna say this now.
Ranger CANNOT build the most damage of all of the classes. Especially against thief despite all of the QQ saying they hit just as hard yada yada. Yes, RF has high scaling but the ranger has no boon access under a DPS build and has substantially lower damage modifiers (less than half) of other classes, notably a good burst thief.

The absolute maximum possible damage output on a ranger’s rapid fire is somewhere along the lines of 13-15k if one assumes max stacks in WvW and a 100% crit rate and food. These wild claims of being hit for 20k RF’s could only be the source of a ranger with 25 stacks of might from other people and the target with 25 stacks of vuln.

Thief backstab – not even the combo – can throttle over 20k depending on the foe.
Proof? Here’s mine, to demonstrate how even after the ferocity nerfs these numbers can be achieved because thieves have so many more damage modifiers whereas the power longbow ranger gets a measly traited 20% at absolute best if flanking and at full endurance. See the screenshot below – and that’s on an 80 heavy with no food or stacks.

And the full CnD combo usually includes mug which yields a total ratio of 1 + 1.5 + 2.4 = 4.9 before considering the effects of might and other readily-accessible boons thieves have access to in order to increase damage. It doesn’t matter that steal has a 30 second cooldown because your target is DEAD. One also needs to consider how burst thieves have access to 16 stacks of might for 10s instantly.

Oh, and such thieves initiate at 2100 range through instant-speed blinking gap closers, which every other class also has access to, many of which also have a multitude of reflect effects, body blocking, inherently high HP/defense, damage immunity, etc. To say RF is overpowered because a full GC ranger gets some predictable and easy to avoid burst damage is just terribly inaccurate, since you can see it coming and can also LoS it through terrain unlike every other melee attack. Are thieves OP? No. Are longbow rangers? No.

Just like I tell people who QQ about thieves being OP, go and play the class/build for yourself, learn it, and then you’ll find out how to beat it. I get a lot of QQ whispers from other thieves I fight when I CnD off of them while they’re stealthed complaining about hacks or lag or some other BS, but ultimately these builds are predictable and in my experience as playing a thief I’ve learned how to beat them fairly easily; they’re easy to counter, and are the source of complaints by players who just simply refuse to learn to get better at counterplaying.

Are some people seriously this incapable of adapting to a higher skill ceiling?
I mean I get the condi scepter/torment mesmer QQ because torment is so difficult to cleanse and it never stops now, but seriously, it’s not like war was the only class nerfed and is facing some major bugs, too (see thief). From my experience so far, not much has changed on a high end or in WvW and the bad warriors are just as bad as everyone else who’s bad.

Are people seriously QQ’ing about longbow ranger DPS being too high? People, please do the math out. They’re still under-performing everyone else and only approximately on-par with everyone else’s burst potential, and in some instances, still lower.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Play a necromancer longer then 3 months after patch in spvp.

Goodluck, and i’ll see those necro changes coming soon.. right?

I mean.. flamethrower buff, right?

I just had breakfast with the balance team. They said they would be happy to prove that they do play necromancers. As soon as you prove you have spent at least 3 months in game design.

Six years working for another AAA title in various positions.

They suck, simply put. Even CC’s are under-performing relative to the three-man volunteer player force we had.

Orpheal.8263:

D/D needs to get changed finally into a true power build, currently is a useless hybrid build thats to weak under power builds and useless as condition build.
If D/D would be more viable as true power build, then you’d not see so much P/D and S/D thieves around in this game. Also P/P needs some changes to become more viable with the other builds in comparison

Only the case in sPvP because of how they cap the effective yield of so many essential stats for D/D burst and how everyone has so much toughness and HP from the celestial amulet being OP combined with generally speaking more defensive stats in sPvP.

In PvE/WvW, D/D is the most effective power set the thief has since its power skills have incredible scaling and important stats aren’t cut.

I believe I misread your earlier post, but I still don’t see why buffing them would solve anything. For those in WvW, it could become a serious issue, and as I said, for many people who play WvW, their racial decisions are often influenced by their racial elites. Nothing screams OP, perhaps, but there are some skills which are strictly better than others and synergize incredibly well with some builds. Just going out and buffing these isn’t a solution either unless each race gets an equivalent version of each skill made available. Should something turn out to be a wee bit stronger than other elites, thus making the entire race in demand, we’ll now see party kicks by race and class and the WvW/GvG meta even stricter.

Would be nice to see some effort put into balancing downed state than removing it. As someone mentioned, it does create a very interesting mechanic in the smaller-scale which in many regards is preferable and requires even smarter gameplay decisions.

It has its merits even when outnumbered, though. Reconsider that 10v50. One of the ten gets focused as does one of them fifty, but the group of ten is a little more organized and finishes the downed person forcing a rally on 10% of their group. That said, I often dislike complaints about these situations, because they’re more about the 50 being of extremely low-skill rather than the 10 deserving the win due to being so incredibly skilled. A 5:1 with half-decent players should ALWAYS win. Skipping downed state might allow for some of these oddball situations to happen every now and then, but people shouldn’t be expecting to be able to consistently perform like that. The only time quality > quantity is relevant in warfare should be if the physical discrepancies are so vast to the point where those elite forces have quite literally no counter, in which case the battlefield is just blatantly unfair since those could only be the spawn of immense resources.

I completely disagree with your statement.

Reaper of Grenth’s use is almost exclusively one for PvP. All of the norn elites provide massive assistance in PvP scenarios – stealth, hard CC, movement long-duration fury, might, and regen, and huge bonuses to health, Hounds and Warband allowing for hit-blocking and are recipients of support skills and effects, and Take Root’s incredible bleeding applications. Some WvW players explicitly run certain races for these abilities, especially the norn and sylvari ones.

Unless all races get the same effects, there’s no way to properly allow them in sPvP or even buff them further.

Edit: Misread.

I’m pretty okay with the above if it stops people from whining.

Pretty much in the same boat as one of the posters above; thanks are warranted and given when an exceptional and/or unexpected action or form of behavior for the better is performed or demonstrated.

As of what I’ve seen since release, I am not thankful to ANet. They’ve quite frankly done nothing to actively improve my playing experience over time. Their maintenance efforts of the game are far from timely and have been in many instances poorly-executed. They follow poor design philosophies and frankly are just still riding the hype and development funding raised from 2010. They are not visionaries, clever, or even attached to their playerbase.

So I ridicule them. Studios like Riot have earned my respect and thanks (and that of many others) by going above and beyond. All GW2 has on me is that it’s currently the best out there due to a limited scope of competition.

I’ll dish out thanks and take back my words when they stop actively and publicly refusing to accept suggestions or make changes on the basis that it differs from some “creative vision” of some of their head developers and try and work with the community as well as with raw data to improve their gameplay dynamics and freshesn the experience.

NinjaEd.3946:

Muchacho.2390:

NinjaEd.3946:

They’ve add more healing skills in the past, its not impossible to add some elites. They should make racial elites stronger though, they serve no competitive use (N/A in pvp) so… how about I enjoy my wolf form?

The racial skiils were always intended to be weaker and are more just for fun skills.

And some are actually really good…

If they had some effect on legit pvp or even GvG (hardly acceptable atm) then I’d agree. But they do not, and they rarely see a place in pve aside from jokes. PVE dungeons I agree in not letting htem excel in any form but open pve, why can’t my Balthazar hounds live for more than 6 seconds? Why can’t my sylvan hound do something impressive aside from ignore conditions (which AI hardly ever use)? Why can’t my artillery barrage do something? Such wasted skill slots even in the game mode that is meant for fun.

I’ll give you a few reasons:
1.) Elite skills aren’t balanced relative to each other by race.
2.) Powerful racial elites will deadlock players into possibly playing certain professions for min-maxing.
3.) The new universal/human race overlay to allow enemy movement prediction would be rendered useless when your standardized enemy performs a non-standard action.
4.) In order to account for the RP’ing part of the RPG, every single race would need access to each of these skills, in which case why not just make more class elites or unify some of these class elites’ effects between classes?

I disagree with more passive gameplay options, but would like to possibly improve the suggestion: All professions should have access to an elite skill classified as one of each of their categories of utilities (signets/traps/clones/spirits/minions/spirit weapons/consecrations/physical/etc.).

Play D/D stab assassin -> Understand why failing doesn’t reveal.

Frankly, the class with the lowest base health and lowest condition removal and one of the lowest damage immunity/prevention mechanics probably does warrant repeated damage spikes or some forgiveness in dealing damage.

I’d only be okay with revealed on misses/blocks if thief gets warrior’s Signet of Strength for ten seconds of unblockable attacks so that I’m not sitting on forced reveal because of someone’s class mechanic or because they rush-swapped a block/immunity which lasts just as long as my stealth duration and forces me down 6 initiative and 10% damage. But then people would cry even harder about unblockable backstabs.

I use Signet of Shadows for general purpose mobility and rely on Thrill of the Crime after engaging.

It really depends on what your traits and play style are are and to which offhand you decide to commit to.

Lol, forgot the build link before (See above post now).

oxtred.7658:

Meta is about boon spam
Thieves have a way to steal boons
>nerf thieves

Well, it should be more like:
Meta is about boon spam
Thieves have a way to steal boons
>nerf the boon spam meta

^
Hope my little analysis makes sense, can’t be bother with a long wall of text.

One of the most intellectual responses I’ve seen in a while on these boards regarding balance and design. +1’ed.

If someone sets themselves up somehow to not have any kind of hitboxed attack/AOE/cleave at all to deal with a stealthed target or multiple foes in general and does nothing to sustain during this period of inactivity, they really do deserve to die, in all honesty. That’s just being unprepared for a very large portion of the game’s content.

There are multiple issues with conditions which cause them to have such astonishing binary representations in PvP scenarios.

The first being food in WvW; condition duration food – both increases and decreases – should be removed. As it stands, it already hurts condition users more than it helps them, as the duration reduction effects end up forcing them to tick for less damage than they would if neither party has condition food.

There is too much removal on some of the most essential classes and skills, and not enough on the rest. Guardians have incredible access to condition removal and additionally have massive party support potential and hard CC attached to AOE’s. Warriors with CI (although we’ll see what happens post-patch) are in the same boat in their resistance to condition builds. With so much removal placed on characters and builds that already have very prominent uses in all forms of PvP, this reduces condi viability by default.

What makes them over the top in roaming and small groups is that classes associated with this have very limited access to removal effects. Thieves for example have some of the worst condition removal access in the game -the absolute worst by a large margin without Shadow Atrs – paired with the lowest base health pool, and are only useful in roaming groups, thus making them extremely vulnerable to condi bombs. The same is said for various other builds and classes which have no place in zergs or the strict sPvP meta focused on turtling points and CC.

Whether or not condition builds have better defensive options per their offensive ones is irrelevant. They should, as ultimately that’s the reason anyone would want to play DoT. The issue is often tied to condi bombs spreading multiple stacks of different types of conditions on a target and a lack of universal cleansing attached to heals. Imagine if every heal skill removed DoT conditions, the number of which scaling with its cooldown. It’d represent a fight with a power build in that a heal when blown will cause a fight to sort of reset. The damage dealt and applied in the past has effectively been mitigated and the person who used the heal isn’t going to die until he takes more new hits all over again. Now a well-timed clear and heal can help reset a fight against a condition user, but won’t require excessive building-around to try and simply deal with the application of some sorts of damage. Yea, most condi bombs are avoidable, just as is power damage, but these aren’t comparable. Consider how often you move away from your opponents using power-based damage to simply not take any more damage so your cooldowns can refresh and you won’t die. You cannot do this against condition players, so strictly speaking, it’s more punishing to be hit by condition attacks, which means that risk-reward by default is skewed favoring condition users even before the stat race and damage per defense point is taken into account.

This with a reduction on accessible light fields/finishers for AOE removal, and overall the effectiveness of CC+damage and support-heavy classes builds would push conditions into a much more healthy position in the PvP environment.

Debuffs/boon removal has almost no place in dungeons as the bosses and mobs don’t get boons which can really be removed if at all, and for those which do, they immediately go back on unless some other condition in satisfied, which is usually through destroying structures, or simply having a mesmer with Phantasmal Disenchanter in the party.

This build is focused entirely on dungeons and PvE for DPS while attacking out of stealth. I do not endorse this exact build for PvP/WvW.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fZAQNAoYVlsMp0pNOxzJ0PNRLBtdHi+L87N6+gAA-TlCBwAXOEAQOBAY3fUuIRJIgHAQWlUp0Hw4IAkwEkO1fAA-w

Has to do more with stat set imbalances and stat caps within sPvP than class skills and coefficients. Play a a dedicated stab build in WvW with build like mine and you’ll end fights before they even start due to the amount of damage dealt so quickly.

In sPvP with all of the funky stat translations, caps, and flawed gear mechanisms, Stab damage drops below 1/3 of what it is in WvW. PTV full tank D/D is mathematically better in almost every regard in sPvP over berserker/GC since gearing and traits mean almost nothing.

And even then, warrior longbow is a poor mainhand weapon, nor is it even close to effective at anything but point-blank range.

Giving thief longbow could give archers what they want: Mobile ranged DPS – be it through class mechanics and skills – and could give non-stealth thieves a weapon they both want and need for 1200 range engages.

OP wants an aggressive DPS weapon. Sadly shortbow is entirely designed around utility the thief lacks elsewhere.

The real issue lies in the lack of an aggressive mobile long-ranged weaponset. P/P is just inferrior to shortbow and doesn’t have any kind of respectable range.

/voteforthieflongbow

Still just wanting the longbow for a 1200 range option as currently we have none, and rangers aren’t real archers but a roleplaying class that will never be fixed.

Serum.4067:

Or you can stop crying and realize your class finally needs skillcap to play. You think mesmers enjoyed the constant blinds and dodges you throw at them? You think they enjoy the fact stealing on them gives you ALL BOONS? You think they like having no counter to your condi builds? Just be quiet and take your nerfs like a man, mesmers have dealt with unbalanced thieves for over a year.

Blindspam is a problem with x/P, which is getting nerfed.

Anyone can dodge. Actually, mesmers have some of the best access to vigor in the game.

Except mesmers still have many more viable condition removal options than thieves do and have increased base health which by default makes them more resistant to condition damage, and thief conditions only come in the form of two DoT’s and poison whereas mesmers, especially post-patch will have a wide variety of DoT applications and AA torment (which is thus subsequently un-cleansable).

And soon to be, the mesmer will gain all boons from a thief using their class mechanic against them.

Frankly, I don’t get all the mesmer QQ. I find my s/s build to be one of the most resilient builds I have against thieves.

If they just got rid of the thing altogether I would contemplate moving trait points to SA.

I refuse to use the SA line because a skilled player can force me into revealed. I don’t even care about him knowing where I am as much as I care about the fact I can’t use my stealth attacks.

All of the above was referring to the longbow, though. Yea, QZ is a great skill for sword mainhand, and frankly, such a build will have the traits to spare since it won’t need MMS.

That’s all I was saying, though. In regards to longbow, I really don’t think QZ post-patch is going to be a utility worth taking, especially with the RF changes in mind. LR is already necessary on so many levels, and signet of the wild is going to have a much more useful effect over QZ in all forms due to the stability and DPH increase making the ranger less vulnerable to effects like retal while blasting RF and autos so much harder. SoTH or any 25% mobility effect is a must and mathematically speaking, SoTH makes more sense over traveler runes or sigil of swiftness for optimal DPS and durability with in-combat reliability.

Raven.9603:

DeceiverX.8361:

The bonus from SoTH paired with damage runes post-update will be more beneficial to you than Traveler/Speed runes and QZ.

QZ is actually kind of mediocre after the patch lands relative to everything else available. I don’t think I’ll be using it any longer.

LOL.

• QZ is still going to be a 50% damage buff after the patch hits, which makes it stronger for sustained burst like rapid fire or autos than signet of the wild.
• Its still going to synergize with SotF, one of the most important traits for anyone not running empathic bond
• taking survival cd reduction is generally more viable than signet cd reduction, because it doesnt compete with malicious training, keen edge or steady focus.

As far as whats better for anyone that depends upon the situation. Substance E nailed it. If youre in pve or spvp or large scale wvw, pet speed doesnt matter. if you are roaming, it matters a lot, so the question becomes “should i take this signet or should i apply swiftness or should i combine the run speed runes with agility training or do I apply enough snares to avoid needing this” and the answer will vary from build to build.

people taking signet of the hunt on the premise that it makes their pet run faster and then popping signet for “utility” on a maul burst or something (most people?) are missing the point of pet run speed.

I don’t think anyone using SoTH is using it for pet run speed. QZ is 50% more DPS but will make RF and longbow in general perform worse on an opponent dodging. It’s also only useful IF you run a 6 NM spec. There are plenty who don’t since the gains really just come from the condition clears. It offers nothing but condi clears over other utility and build options.

Funny part about it is that it’s going to get even more burst potential with the incoming changes. The DPH is going to be increased even further as compensation for the reduced duration.

The reason why I’m here actually is because of the action/skill-based gameplay. As are many others, and it was a massive part of their marketing thing since it allowed for endgame content to be available relatively easily.

I’m quite happy to be off the gear treadmill in all honesty, and I have absolutely no intention on going back to one even if it’s “more balanced.”

It has much less to do with the strategy in place but the overall handling of the game content and class balance in general; simply, ANet is just slacking in this department and thus failing to properly market their game as a competitive one since it so obviously isn’t.

BrunoBRS.5178:

barrage will kill your ranger faster than enemy zerg attack if you time it poorly.

This is what I was going to say. Longbow ranger in general. especially with piercing, has major issues against retal.

Except then you can play more skillfully against them since if only one CC can be applied per weapon, you can actually dodge the entirety of it.

As it stands, all you can do against a hammer warrior is either have stability or run away. And some classes do not have good access to stability, forcing them to run away, really regardless of how good the player is.

Loki.2894:

- Hammer has far too much damage+CC give it one or the other not both.

This is my only issue here. But it’s not unique to warriors. Any class that has access to the hammer seems to have all of its best CC loaded on it with extremely short cooldowns and the highest or close to the highest single-hit coefficients of all of its weapon sets and many other class’s.

I’d much rather see the CC distributed around the weapons more, or simply the damage reduced on some of these skills so that a war or guard has to bring both a utility/combo alignment and damage/bomb set to the table like everyone else, and has to maintain switching weapon combinations through a fight to get a proper execute set up.

LughLongArm.5460:

mistfirewolf

Lmao.

You win.

The bonus from SoTH paired with damage runes post-update will be more beneficial to you than Traveler/Speed runes and QZ.

QZ is actually kind of mediocre after the patch lands relative to everything else available. I don’t think I’ll be using it any longer.

How to fix poison volley, and frankly, a lot of issues with shortbow:
It shouldn’t be allowed to hit a target more than once per cast;
It applies the current maximum poison duration on each arrow;
Its arrow hitboxes are larger and allow for a 30% increased spread radius;
It applies 3 stacks of torment for 5s to enemies hit.

Sword 2 is a 4 initiative burn unique to a weapon set, and it only cleanses on return after a pretty long and readible channel. Shortbow being mandatory thus puts one of the very few cleanses the class has on a 1/3 chance of even being there on mainhand weapons.

SoA is bad and only removes one condition. Shame that those 2 stacks of vuln got prioritized.

SS is about the only viable means of condition removal the thief has that isn’t dependent on either investing too heavily into a given spec or build.

SE and the entire SA line fails against bombs and is simply poor in sPvP and only applicable to high-stealth uptime builds.

It best belongs on HiS (and pain response). It already removes all of the damage conditions (except confusion, but that damage can be prevented totally, so whatever), and has a substantially higher cooldown and plays nice with every weaponset. Withdraw is pretty unique to S/D since Sword 2 already has the DoT removal and withdraw lets the thief re-gain normal mobility on a short cooldown with a nice heal + reposition.

It’s a double-edged sword (no pun intended).

It can allow for very skilled S/D players to pretty much return to the permanent evasion builds they used to have before FS/LS was a two-part skill, allowing for many consecutive dodges.

What it will do is nerf the S/D 3-spammers who win by a high scaling second part of the skill pre-casted to initialize boon stealing/burst during a mug and free evasion immediately after followed again by boon stealing and high damage throughputs.

I’m calling it too early to make judgments now. We’ll have to see how hitboxes interact with FS and if someone skilled attempts the evasion build again.

I’m not sure, honestly.

Major moves are necessary for progress, and any subjective subject like balance requires some kind of possible short-term risks.

My problem is that ANet has such a vast detachment from what’s balanced – often on even the conceptual level – that I’m just not sure this kind of effort would even pay off long-term. If over the past two years we could be able to track steady progress in achieving balance and designate certain traits/skills as simply poor by design and thus assign them reworks, I would be more prone to agree. The problem is ANet hasn’t even gotten that far, and this issue spans entire class mechanics due to their stubbornness to admit they’ve made poor design choices and try to work towards alternate solutions geared towards actually resolving the conflict even if it means reworks.

Wishful thinking at the most. ANet can’t even get their current skills, traits, and mechanics even remotely balanced now, and they have a surplus of weapons not usable by most classes.

VShare/Ninja Nurse is good for WvW, but if you’re after sPvP, pick another profession.

Strictly speaking, these changes are in the wrong direction.

They have no effect in sPvP and no effect in PvE.
So it just leads these to actually having an effect in WvW. The problem being that these changes are absolutely and totally ridiculous for WvW on a build which already has absolutely absurd condition application with very passive play.

So what did ANet accomplish here? Nothing. Except they broke the class matchups even more in WvW.

For those saying that because it’s only good in one mode it’s fair, that’s not how things are justified. That’s like saying because bearbow ranger is by far the best class in solo open world PvE, they do not need any changes despite their clear, distinct, and known poor performance in all other modes and situations.

AA torment is not a balanced or even a good fix. The developers seemingly made this change for no good reason other than giving mesmers a random buff so they’d be happy with everyone else’s buffs (though thieves are still not very happy).

It’s not that mesmers don’t need a buff or tweaks but that this is completely the WRONG WAY to start since it will also just outright inhibit the buffing of other condition-oriented skills/traits.

dancingmonkey.4902:

DeceiverX.8361:

Care to elaborate? I see no real evidence supporting your claim.

No evidence?

Many games during tourny’s such as Dota 2 for example, offer each team a certain amount of chances to black out a character from play. Each team has the same amount of picks. This is often used to block the other team from choosing characters, classes, or profession they thrive at. It happens a very large number of Esports games.

Sorry, I was under the impression that this was fairly common knowledge.

I was referring to your expression how that blocking opponents out of their selections adversely affects diversity.

Frankly, the reason it’s implemented into the game to begin with is to do promote diversity by preventing teams from building compositions of blatantly overpowered character choices, or making teams compromise strategically before the game even begins. Characters considered not viable or situationally useful by design thus have their shining moments when worked around the bans. If no bans took place, every team would have the same composition every time – it’d be like if players were not allowed to be traded in sports teams until they retired. That’d make for a really lame spectator sport, don’t you think? Especially when once one team wins the series the first year by a landslide, they’ll probably keep doing so, and people will just know the victors before it even begins.

You can’t apply that logic here, though, since our selection is much smaller. Consider those games for a minute, where say, in a given ranked game of league, the matchup consists of quite literally one of quintillions of combinations. A few bans will not severely affect the diversity in the game. What’s much, much more unhealthy for the E-sport scene is a metagame, or strictly speaking, all of these possibilities not designed around one static way of playing.

So I’ll ask again. Where’s your evidence?

The main issue the build has is a lack of condi cleansing except for HiS. It’s been reasonable so far since torment isn’t too spammy – dodge their torment/confusion bombs and you’re pretty much alright. I do have to wonder just how difficult scepter mesmer will be with the upcoming torment-on-autoattack change (not to mention the confusion), since this build has quite literally zero access to confusion and torment removal.

Depends on your style and how willing you are to push yourself. I actively dislike the SA line due to the 1 pt adept sometimes forcing you into revealed because you face a good player.

Most thief builds are viable to some extent. Even VShare is quite powerful in the right hands for WvW.

I personally play an assassination build following this setup as it yields the absolute best possible burst damage on the backstab rotation:

http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=Vd;4Rw-1-5-VOFd0;9;4OT;0E28-17B;44;05Bl0UR;0udbTudbTt-FSF6-6-VY-VhVlWqXv2147a9k-G-2sV8;3F2-oF2Co;9;9;9;9;17N0;26-6E

I have 17k hp on my thief. Not really glass.