Guild Wars 2

The popularity of Lyssa Runes is directly tied to the popularity of bombing your enemies with massive condition pressure.

Most abilities and traits were designed around the assumption that a player will only ever have 2-5 conditions on him at most time. But with the prevalence of Singet of Malince, Agony and Perplexity Runes conditions are everywhere and abundant.

For many classes Lyssa Runes are the only counter to being bombed by a massive amount of conditions.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Terravos.4059:

Down State isn’t very balanced to begin with, and personally I would love it removed.

However since I doubt that’ d never happen, I can tell you what the game does need, is Rez Penalties….

you get back up from being downed, You should eat a very nasty Stat Penalty that should last at least 2 minutes.

downed penalty already exist.
down the same player 4 times in quick session and he will be defeated.

Oh wow…only 4 times within 1 minute…..no problem then I guess.

Grebcol.5984:

i want my 1200 Range back.

Yeah, the limited range is the biggest issue. You can barely shoot down a wall with 900 range, let alone place an AoE.

1200 range and a faster projectile for Clusterbomb is all I really ask.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Dee Jay.2460:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

risenlord.2035:

I don’t know about your experiences. but from my experience once an ele goes down they teleport away and then get stomped 99.9% of the time. It’s a good mechanic for delaying a respawn but thats about it. Just saying ele downstate is weaksauce.

its all about team work actually.

for example, a fellow downed elementalist may mist form and run to my feet, where i, as a warrior, revive the elementalist quickly.

enemies (without stability) trying to stomp the elementalist while my warrior is trying to revive?

i shout “fear me!” and send them running away while i successfully revive the downed elementalist.

this is teamwork!

Yeah but it’s not fair team-work.

The effort required is hugely in favor of the reviver. In your example all it takes is one skill and a 3 second click to bring someone back into action who you needed 20 seconds and 30 skill-uses to kill.

That’s what makes it so dumb. Reviving is so easy and rewarding compared to the effort it takes to down someone. If reviving took 8 seconds of interrupted casting to revive (like in most MMOs) things would be different.

If damage interrupted the revive process, things would be different (because everyone has damage, not everyone has interrupts or can counter stability).

You and your mate blow various cooldowns and resources to down someone over the course of 30 seconds and all his mate has to do in order to negate that effort is click him for 3 seconds? How dumb is that? Tell me how this is fair or balanced?

Just because it requires someone else to do it (aka. team-work) doesn’t justify it being so easy, rewardings and overpowered.

if you and your mates are good, you can bring down their health again.
or prevent them from reviving their downed team mates.
or burst down their downed team mate such that reviving is impossible unless done with a few more people. also freshly revived people have much less health.

Way to go about completely ignoring the argument. Sure there are ways to deal with it in practice. But it doesn’t change the fact that reviving from downed-state is too simple and easy compared to what it takes to down someone.

And this isn’t even touching on the downed abilities where some classes are guaranteed to deny you your stomp.

In order to stomp someone in a group fight you expose yourself to great pressure, you must be faster than the reviver, you must have the appropriate counter ability to ensure the stomp (if there even is a counter) and you need Stability to ensure no one else interrupts you. And all that just to kill someone you have already defeated in combat.

That’s just dumb.

The essence is though that a 3 second click negates an entire Pvp battle that may have lasted quite a while and involved actual skill.

This game just has too much cleave damage flying around for its own good.

It’s ok to have weapon sets that are designed for AoE damage, like the Thief Shortbow or the Guardian Staff. Using these weapons commit you to the play-style for a while.

But in GW2 most popular weapons deal AoE, and the cleave radius in quite generous. And that’s not even account for all the targeted AoE there is, like Mesmer kitten, Necro wells etc.

And since everything can be used very liberally without consequence (aka. spammed) there’s never a reason to hold back. Just plaster that node with AoE and hope for the best.

Kharr.5746:

Dee Jay.2460:

Because as I pointed out before, AoE CC coupled with decent AoE damage is never going to be bad.

I know Hammer hasn’t been popular for that long but it has always been OP in my book. No class should be able to constantly put out so much AoE CC. It’s just broken, especially in a game where most players have a fairly short time to live.

People back then were just too caught up in the impressive Greatsword numbers to give Hammer much attention. Now that they’ve grasped how easy it is to pressure people with CC in this game they won’t give it up easily.

Uh, Hammer was NOT OP before. It became OP when ANET buffed hammer skills by removing aftercast so they could be chained / allowed them to be used while moving (they used to root the warrior during the animation). Prior to these changes, it was very difficult to land staggering blow / hammer shock.

That may be so.

However I still remember facing the odd Hammer Warrior early in the game and it was annoying as hell. This game gives us access to 1 stun-breaker on a 30-60 second cooldown, 1 dodge every 10 seconds and then gives a class the ability to AoE CC everyone within 10 yards every…what, 8 seconds?

Yes, maybe the weapon was poorly designed (I’d argue it still is), but it’s still conceptually overpowered. It’s just not healthy to have such a weapon in game, and it’s not fun to play against. Would you consider it fun to play against Necros that could AoE fear every 8 seconds, even if the class was balanced around it?

Well for starters I’ve never been yelled at for playing a certain build. Well…maybe along the lines of “omg cheese noob build spammer lolz” but I’m sure that’s not what you mean.

Anyway, I agree with your general sentiment but not necessarily with the specifics.

My take on…

Lyssa Runes – Yes, Lyssa runes are a reaction to the condition bombing phenomenon some classes have. In the early days Lyssa Runes weren’t better than others because you didn’t frequently have 6+ Conditions dumped on you at once while you abilities were only designed to remove one or two conditions at a time.

Lyssa Runes are the only way some classes can deal with this type of condition pressure. Imo Agony should have never been added to the game. It just pushed Conditions as a whole over the point. It just adds another DPS condition to an already bloated Condition meta while abilities were never designed with this sort of Condition bombing in mind.

Sure, you can nerf Dhuumfire but that’s just addressing the symptoms, not the cause.

Thieves – I’m not sure about you but very few Thieves currently still run Backstab builds. S/D still seems to be the most popular but that may change. I don’t have any huge issues with Thieves right now, just that their lack of Stability and Protection make them really frustrating to play on Skyhammer and during node-fights.

Engineers – I agree with you there. Engineers have been OP for a while now but always remained unimpaired because they aren’t as popular as other classes and have more complex mechanics. Still the extent to which this class can bunker while still putting out good condition pressure is OP.

Guardians – I’ve felt for a while now that Guardians are one of the most balanced classes in the game. I just don’t like just how hard they can bunker. They’re virtually unkillable by single players and can even tank multiple enemies for a while. This isn’t a good balance. Being tanky is ok, but borderline immortal…not so much.

Rangers – Oh god yes, Spirits are so dumb and just add to the already unbearable visual noise in this game. And it doesn’t even take any skill to play. It would be great if Rangers required a little more finesse and had more depth to their skills rather than relying on all this passive play and automatic procs. GW2 has by far the most boring Ranger class of any MMO. But fixing Rangers would require quite an extensive rework.

Warriors – I still think it’s too soon to judge their overall balance after the patch but I agree that Healing Singet is still incredibly OP. Passive abilities should never be the best choice. But HS is for a number of builds. Personally I think Hammer is still conceptually OP. Being able to put out so much AoE damage and CC on a regular basis just isn’t suitable for a game like GW2 where, due to low TTK and active combat, CC needs to be targeted and avoidable.

Mesmers – Mesmers are probably the most OP class next to Engineers. And their new Heal is just mindboggling in that context. In WvW the stealth-spam coupled with conditions and constant blocks + _Aegis_makes them virtually unkillable. In sPvP they can be equally OP when they have their Phantasms do the work while they spam stealth-moves and Illusions.

Now I can’t fault them for that, but the amount of visual noise and clutter that Mesmers create with their abilities is unbearable for a game like GW2, where it’ imperative to know and see what’s going on on screen. In that context I find the rate at which Mesmers can create Illusions to be the biggest offender. They can literally create one over 2 seconds…mostly from passive abilities. That’s just excessive. The biggest offender is probably Deceptive Evasion. By itself it wouldn’t be so bad, but combined with near permanent Vigor and other Illusion spawns its just too much.

Elementalists – I don’t have a strong opinion about Elementalists at the moment. Just that the combination of Bunker builds + Conjured weapons seems OP in WvW because it combines tankiness with so much offensive pressure. There just doesn’t seem to be the trade-off you’d normally expect. But other than that I will reserve judgement until further notice.

I also agree about the +/- 40% Condition duration food. Power builds don’t get +40% Crit-chance or +40% Crit-damage from food, so why should Conditions builds? It just doesn’t make sense to offer them such an increase in effectiveness when other foods aren’t nearly as good. +/- 20% is reasonable.

Because as I pointed out before, AoE CC coupled with decent AoE damage is never going to be bad.

I know Hammer hasn’t been popular for that long but it has always been OP in my book. No class should be able to constantly put out so much AoE CC. It’s just broken, especially in a game where most players have a fairly short time to live.

People back then were just too caught up in the impressive Greatsword numbers to give Hammer much attention. Now that they’ve grasped how easy it is to pressure people with CC in this game they won’t give it up easily.

You have some really poor synergy here.

You take both Fleet Shadows and Singet of Shadows despite them canceling each other out while in stealth?

Same applies to Side Strike and Hidden Killer. You’d be better off with Fury when low on health.

Then you picked Cloaked in Shadows which makes absolutely no sense for a D/P build as the blind is completely redundant.

Otherwise it’s your pretty standard run-of-the mill D/P build.

PS: Again, Divinity Runes aren’t great for Thieves. Regular Orbs will give you more bang for much, much less bucks.

The nature of WvW combat favors balling up. This is due to the 5-target AoE cap and combo-fields.

This balling helps mitigate damage, but not avoid it completely. This is why zerging favors classes that can tank damage fairly well.

AoE damage is also important, as is CC if it affects multiple targets. And here Warriors and Guardians excel again.

AoE boons and support are relevant as well and they both do well in that area too. Especially Stability is crucial (due to the former point).

The only thing Guardians and Warriors lack slightly is combo-fields and ranged damage, but that’s why Elementalists are popular as well.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

risenlord.2035:

I don’t know about your experiences. but from my experience once an ele goes down they teleport away and then get stomped 99.9% of the time. It’s a good mechanic for delaying a respawn but thats about it. Just saying ele downstate is weaksauce.

its all about team work actually.

for example, a fellow downed elementalist may mist form and run to my feet, where i, as a warrior, revive the elementalist quickly.

enemies (without stability) trying to stomp the elementalist while my warrior is trying to revive?

i shout “fear me!” and send them running away while i successfully revive the downed elementalist.

this is teamwork!

Yeah but it’s not fair team-work.

The effort required is hugely in favor of the reviver. In your example all it takes is one skill and a 3 second click to bring someone back into action who you needed 20 seconds and 30 skill-uses to kill.

That’s what makes it so dumb. Reviving is so easy and rewarding compared to the effort it takes to down someone. If reviving took 8 seconds of interrupted casting to revive (like in most MMOs) things would be different.

If damage interrupted the revive process, things would be different (because everyone has damage, not everyone has interrupts or can counter stability).

You and your mate blow various cooldowns and resources to down someone over the course of 30 seconds and all his mate has to do in order to negate that effort is click him for 3 seconds? How dumb is that? Tell me how this is fair or balanced?

Just because it requires someone else to do it (aka. team-work) doesn’t justify it being so easy, rewardings and overpowered.

Yes, down-state is a terrible mechanic for PvP.

The OPs analysis is correct. The mechanics of downed-state are fundamentally snowballing.(I.e. advantageous to larger numbers).

Rallying just further exasperates the issue.

We have complained about this feature for a while now but ANet doesn’t seem to want to hear it. Maybe the feature is too fundamental to GW2’s game-play for it to be changed but I don’t believe so.

I just think they’re oblivious to many of the problems in this game. Maybe they don’t frequent the forums enough or play their own game, I don’t know.

But for a while now it’s been apparent how detrimental downed-state is to PvP in this game.

Posting in a legendary thread.

If you frequented these boards a week ago roughly half the threads were filled with QQ about the apparent “nerf” that was due to hit Thieves on the 10th.

The hyperbole to which people went in order to claim “all is vain” was quite ridiculous at times.

Now that the patch has come and gone my verdict is that it really hasn’t changed much for Thieves.

The biggest changes are that I can no longer perma-stealth in D/P (I can still chain-leap 3 times….just not sustain it). But too be honest, I barely relied on it anyway. D/P still works fine and actually benefits a bit from the improved regen when not trying to chain Heartseekers.

Dagger/Dagger is probably the biggest winner now that we can use Blinding Shadows instead of Infusion of Shadows. It was workable before but was not very forgiving. Now there’s a little more leeway.

And S/D…to be honest….I’m not noticing the changes. The improved passive regeneration is canceled out by the nerfs to the active regeneration and the other changes were too subtle to notice in practice anyway.

I can’t speak for most other builds, but I assume most have been either not affected, or slightly benefited from the changes.

So there you have it, on contraire to popular belief “all is not vain”.

Good question

1. One seamless world – No more load-screens and waypoints. They ruin the illusion of a comprehensive world.

2. No “heart quests” – They aren’t necessary and don’t add much to the game. Dynamic Events are sufficient.

3. More skills – No one wants to go back to juggling 50 skills, but more than 15 would be nice. Maybe about 25.

4. A better character progression system with more interesting builds.

5. A much, much, much larger and more involving WvW area. Acknowledge WvW as a core pillar of your endgame.

6. PvE raids – 10 man raid content could actually be really fun.

7. No more downed state – Design the game so that instant gibs are less common and thus downed-state isn’t necessary.

It wouldn’t be Guild Wars if pets and minions weren’t hosting a party at every node.

I don’t really think the overall balance changes much for Thieves.

I don’t think they were significantly nerfed, nor significantly buffed. Things were just changed around slightly without upsetting much actual game-play.

KarlaGrey.5903:

Simple solution: Don’t que in SoloQ.
Better solution: Join the bright side and stop pvping altogether.

For all the frustration it causes I do actually like playing SoloQ.

It’s just Skyhammer, this cancer, this abomination of a map that is unbearable to me.

I cannot stand it. I cannot stand how my Shadowsteps stop working because the ground is suddenly gone. I hate how my dodges and even my heals will get me killed.

And worst of all I hate this undodgeable joke of the Skyhammer itself. It just makes stunning and CC even more powerful and the failed shadowsteps even worse.

This map is the pinnacle of ANets incompetence thus far in sPvP.

Btw. I just quit another Skyhammer game, thus causing another 4 vs. 5.

Let me opt out of this map or I will continue to do so.

Sword + Pistol is better for PvE in 90% of scenarios. Black Powder is great, but it’s even better when coupled with AoE damage.

Sword also deals the same auto-attack damage than Daggers, so damage is on the side of Sword as well.

Downed-State is the safety net for bad players and gives the bigger numbers and even greater upper hand.

It’s broken and unfair in ways that have been expanded on before extensively and it is by far the worst feature in GW2, of that I am sure.

In fact playing without downed-state is what I look forward to most in coming MMOs.

Backstab is poorly telegraphed, there’s no denying it.

But it’s hardly problematic in sPvP. I honestly don’t remember the last time I was actually hit by Backstab.

And even then it probably didn’t hit for more than 7k.

Hits above 7k require the target to be a glass cannon and the Thief to spec deep into Deadly Arts, which for all intents and purposes, is a pretty kittenty tree.

I only see it working in a Venom build and even there other heals might be better.

The cooldown is bad enough, but at least you can trait it. But the lack of Condition removal really kills it for me.

It’s not terrible and I can understand being cautious when introducing new skills but it’s really too niche to be all that useful.

Frankly it didn’t feel all that collaborative to me.

It was more like “here are the changes we have planed for your class” /discuss.

And then they rolled out the changes only with some very, very minor adjustments.

And then we are still left with traits that kill us on a regular basis like Last Refuge.

Yeah, there was nothing collaborative about this “effort”.

It just feels like the game is lagging.

A terrible design decision to go through with this change. It’s the least elegant solution to a problem that never existed in the first place.

Yeah I admit it and I feel kind of bad about it.

I just caused a 4 vs. 5.

I believe this was the first time I did it on purpose however.

But there’s just no way I was going to endure another game on Skyhammer, this god awful abomination of a PvP map.

I can’t say for sure but I may end up doing this on a regular basis.

There’s just no way this map even belongs in a competitive PvP game. It’s not allowed in Team tournaments but we have to put up with it in SoloQ, why? Why for all things holy?

Yeah this change to Infiltrator’s Return is incomprehensible to me.

I “get” why they made many of the other changes but this one is beyond me. Not only does it try to fix something that wasn’t a problem it also feels like the game is laggy and unresponsive.

Some of the exploits were OP, I agree, like the porting through walls and barriers. But why not fix those directly instead of messing with the ability.

I don’t disagree, but I hope they might just replace Revealed with a better mechanic.

Because frankly Revealed is the worst, most frikkle, buggy and frustrating “anti-stealth” mechanic I have ever witnessed.

I don’t necessarily think Killshot as an ability is OP.

But those damage numbers are just insane, there’s no way around it. I don’t see why in the world a Warrior has to deal so much more damage than any other class.

If any other class had such a strong ability dealing 10.000 damage over 1200 range we’d all be agreeing it is ridiculous. But because we’re talking about Warriors this is somehow ok?

Come on…

Aberrant.6749:

In a large groups conditions get removed very quickly. They usually wind up dealing quite a bit less damage than direct damage (as morrolan pointed out).

+40% duration food is countered with the -40% duration food

That’s a kittenty argument.

Since when is every food supposed to have a counter-food?

Is there a counter for any other counter-food out there?

Food is supposed to be a bonus, a buff according to your play-style. And as a bonus, the 40% Condition duration is overpowered compared to others.

Single Conditions aren’t really an issue imo, but Condition bombing is. And currently every skill in the game seems to add some sort of Condition, mostly more.

Why is someone who is clearly afk, still put into a match once the count-down hits 0?

How does that make sense?

If he was afk during the count-down, chances are he’ll be afk once the game begins and that just causes another 5 vs. 4.

Why not just delay the game for a few more seconds and draft in someone who is….you know…not afk?

I actually use the 50% run-speed while in stealth. It really helps with Backstabbing classes who have Swiftness.

I also dislike Mug because I can’t use Steal without damaging the target. Sometimes it’s nice to use it as a gap-closer and the follow up with a Backstab.

Nosferatu.7418:

Ah, sad day indeed. Thanks for letting me know about the Sentinel’s set, I will look into this. I might give up some crit chance, but with toughness that would make one tanky necro.

Please Anet, consider adding a Barbarian’s PVE set!

I hope they allow us to craft any stat combination we want on Ascended armor.

Furajir.3815:

Heed my words.

With every patch, there comes a new meta, followed shortly to said meta or counters to prior meta counters etc etc and the cycle will always contnue. Warriors became a counter to the counter, and dealt with the condi meta. Now The cycle is starting again. With every new patch, theres always something wrong.

This is only true up to a point.

Yes, with every patch the meta evolves and you get a new FotM. That FotM will sometimes, but not always lead to a counter-meta.

But this process is generally over within a month, 2 at the most.

GW2 just doesn’t have that many classes, abilities or depth to have and extensive meta-game. It’s not like GW1 where every class had hundreds of skills to chose from. It’s not LoL or DotA 2 with their 100 different heroes and dozens of different items.

+ 40% Condition Duration food exasperates the problem. Practically every Condition build uses this food for good reason. It’s much more powerful (relatively speaking) than any other food buff out there.

Bringing it down to +20% would be reasonable.

And yes, Singet of Spite and the pressure Necros can apply with it is ridiculous as well. I’m not sure if Conditions in general are a problem but I just feel like Agony should have never been added to the game.

Bandwidth really shouldn’t be all that decisive as games don’t generally consume a lot of bandwidth. Most of the time you won’t be transferring more than 5-10 kb/seconds, with the odd spikes in stressful situations.

What does matter however is the quality and speed of your connection, as in how long does it take the signal to travel the internet and how reliable is it.

Ping and Jitter can give you a solid indication but aren’t the only factors. WLAN for example can give you both a stable ping and little Jitter while still causing in game lag.

A fiber connection directly into your PC is the best you can get.

Anything that works without a direct cable connection (WLAN, Satellite or whatever) is suboptimal.

As for bandwidth…there really shouldn’t be a huge difference between a 5Mbit and a 50/Mbit connection as long as they are using the same tech.

I too still find these Runes to be grossly overpowered.

No other Rune set has really struck me kitten “out of whack”. Maybe Confusion itself is the issue, but the Runes really exasperate the issue.

Please nerf them further or replace them with something less impactful.

It does not currently exist.

To be honest I wasn’t aware it existed in PvP either. TIL…

Budchgon.2108:

Anyone know the build? is it a common build?
All zerker? Scholar runes?

Probably.

10/30/30/0/0

or

0/30/30/10/0 are by far the most popular.

How much Zerker gear you want depends on you. You can go anywhere from full Zerker to full Valkyrie. The difference is roughly 3000 HP vs. 15% Crit-Chance.

What am I missing? The abundance of knock-back cheese?

Arganthium.5638:

Dee Jay.2460:

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

his math was…..flawed.

If the math is flawed, then by all means redo it and post your calculations. I’d be very interested to see them.

The math may be correct, but it doesn’t relate to game-play.

Most theorycrafting assume some sort of tank and spank scenario because real game-play has too many variables. But guess what, more so than in any other MMO you are constantly moving and dodging in GW2.

Especially in PvP which seems to be the biggest concern for most. And that’s where we will end up with equal or more Initiative to blow. And for every Dodge we lose because of the Vigor nerf we gain an extra Lancerous Strike.

So it’s really not as a cut & dry as people are making it out to be.

So you’re one of those people.

My first request would be for you to identify one of the “too many variables” that you identified, and then justify how theorycrafting cannot practically identify its effects.

Quite simple.

Someone calculates that we have less effective Initative now, due to the “Initiative on Crit” nerf. This is assuming we are standing still and constantly attacking a target.

Thus they conclude this is a nerf.

In practice however a S/D Thief for example might only have 50% DPS time on a target, maybe even less. The rest of the time is spent dodging, shadowstepping and stealthing.

Even in PvE I never sit and hit for longer than a few seconds at a time. So the theorycrafting doesn’t really apply. It’s not that it’s wrong, it just makes too broad assumptions.

I’m convinced we will have a much more comfortable Initiative cushion, especially in sPvP, than prior. In PvE it will be slightly less noticeable and probably feel more or less the same.

I don’t think we will actually find ourselves with less Initiative, exception being D/P.

It works, but can be frustrating to play at times.

Most classes carry lots of Condition cleansing so you’ll have a hard time applying pressure. You really need to spam lots of different condition types in order to cover your Bleeds.

But worst of all you cannot prevent someone from reviving his fallen team-mate. So you’re really just going to be doing 1v1 with a build that takes a long time to kill and gives everyone ample opportunity to escape if they wish.

Imagi.4561:

Sanduskel.1850:

his math was…..flawed.

If the math is flawed, then by all means redo it and post your calculations. I’d be very interested to see them.

The math may be correct, but it doesn’t relate to game-play.

Most theorycrafting assume some sort of tank and spank scenario because real game-play has too many variables. But guess what, more so than in any other MMO you are constantly moving and dodging in GW2.

Especially in PvP which seems to be the biggest concern for most. And that’s where we will end up with equal or more Initiative to blow. And for every Dodge we lose because of the Vigor nerf we gain an extra Lancerous Strike.

So it’s really not as a cut & dry as people are making it out to be.

Oh I agree entirely that these changes are completely random and totally miss the opportunity of fixing some of the more fundamental flaws on the class.

If you had asked anyone 3 months ago I don’t think anyone would have considered the ratio of active/passive Initiative regeneration to be a problem. But somehow ANet does.

It’s baffling and arbitrary and makes you wonder what’s next. Because clearly our feedback here is meaningless as they just pursue their own agenda.

Nobody really uses run-speed singets in sPvP as utility spots are too valuable.

So most classes have standard run-speed unless they stack Swiftness.

Skill points are so abundant in this game now that having them feels absolutely redundant.

In total my characters are sitting on close to 1000 skill-points. Whatever are we going to spend them on?

Skill-points are just another meaningless currency in this game.

Maesk.8753:

Dee Jay.2460:

I honestly don’t think the upcoming patch is going to be a nerf for Thieves.

It may change things up a little but not to the point of making currently popular builds completely unviable. I know this is against the popular opinion here but I don’t think people have quite grasped what the 1 Initiative/second actually means in real game-play (as opposed to crunching numbers on a spreadsheet).

I think you’re forgetting the vigor nerfs (quite large), the change to inf. strike (huge) and the change to infusion of shadow (good for some bad for some).

No I did not forget them. I just don’t think they will be quite as impactful as people here on the forums proclaim, especially in light of other class changes.

For example we may see less Warriors use the Hammer now, so the nerf to Infiltrator Strike might not be as significant. That one also happens to be the only change I find hard to justify.

I honestly don’t think the upcoming patch is going to be a nerf for Thieves.

It may change things up a little but not to the point of making currently popular builds completely unviable. I know this is against the popular opinion here but I don’t think people have quite grasped what the 1 Initiative/second actually means in real game-play (as opposed to crunching numbers on a spreadsheet).

Maybe after the patch on Tuesday. I’m sure that should cause some stir among the Ele-community.

Eles tend to have a hard time in sPvP for various reasons.

However in WvW the Bunker + Conjure Weapons build is extremely popular and powerful. Why does that not work in sPvP?

ANet brought some much needed innovations to the MMO genre. Dynamic Events, casual-appealing WvW, active combat etc.

But for each of their innovations they messed up something for the worse. You could start with PvE encounter design and move on to Ascended Gear and downed-state/resurrections etc.

Last Refuge NEEDS to be changed. ANet knows this and has for the past entire year. But they’d rather mess around with active and passive Initiative than fix a trait that is broken and results in the Thief’s death more often than not.

I get rage fits about this trait at least once every few days and it makes me curse whoever designed it to hell and back again. In no other MMO, subscription or not, would such an trait be allowed to exist unaltered for so long.

It’s almost like ANet is completely ignorant of it despite us complaining about it for a year. It isn’t helped by the fact that it’s in our most popular and trait-line.