Guild Wars 2

I’d be concerned what balancing havoc would occur if this went through. It’s similar to how many builds would be perfect if we had 10 more skill points.

The Mexican Cookie.3690:

Dual.8953:

XacTactX.6709:

It’s amazing there’s so many people saying they prefer an inferior play style that makes things take longer and be harder than they have to be. Please petition ANet to change the meta, in the meantime I’ll use the most efficient means available.

Is it really that hard to believe that some people are more interested in kicking back and enjoying a dungeon with others, rather than treating it like a job, chasing a carrot on a stick?

Let’s keep making assumptions on how the other party feels about their own playstyle, it seems like a really intelligent thing to do.

I had making a marked group in mind. Cool off.

XacTactX.6709:

It’s amazing there’s so many people saying they prefer an inferior play style that makes things take longer and be harder than they have to be. Please petition ANet to change the meta, in the meantime I’ll use the most efficient means available.

Is it really that hard to believe that some people are more interested in kicking back and enjoying the challenge a dungeon can present with others while trying out their own custom made build, rather than treating it like a job, chasing a carrot on a stick?

Thighum.7295:

Dual.8953:

S/P would become a very strong control Spec… I wouldn’t call them OP… With P/P, it’d be a welcome change to bring P/P into serious usability, however it’d pretty much steal P/D’s purpose and function in doing so…

P/P needs a buff. The life stealing would provide it with additional survivability and a little damage.

I disagree that it would steal d/p’s purpose.
P/P would most likely remain physical damage based, I would guess the most likely rotation to be something like Black Powder -> Sneak Attack -> Unload. Repeat many times.
P/D would most likely remain more condition based, maybe a slight change would be required to reinforce this.

1) You mean P/D not D/P?
2) The thing of it is, P/P with a natural stealth would put it an ideal situation to spam Sneak Attack, the crux of P/D’s condi role, at max range, when you factor in Infusion of Shadow, you’ll have a weapon set that can spam 5 stacks of life steal charged bleeding at 900 range. Thus why I suggested BP cost 9 init, so ranged stealth would always be more costly then melee stealth.

Personally I’d like something to explode and for it to rain loot like the end of a Borderlands 2 campaign.

S/P would become a very strong control Spec, with access to Tactical Strike, Pistol Whip and Headshot from stealth, I wouldn’t call them OP, but I would call them annoying as kitten. With P/P, it’d be a welcome change to bring P/P into serious usability, however it’d pretty much steal P/D’s purpose and function in doing so. Dark combo Sneak Attack sounds kinda scary when you think about it. The only way I can think of keeping the balance of Black Powder on the level of its melee ranged counter part in this case is increasing BP’s init cost to 8 or 9 init at least. This’d let X/Ps have thier new stealth, but make the cost so high that they couldn’t spam it, even with Infusion of Shadows. BP would be low risk high cost and CnD would high risk, low cost.

Nike Porphyrogenita.8137:

Right, and this game isn’t about playing defined roles. DPS, Support and Control all handled by every member of the party.

Maybe YOU are advocating making the game more like LoL or TF2 (why you couldnt just go play those? I dunno) but go and read all those “nerf zerker” threads. Most of the know-nothings posting in there were not talking about playing a game with roles, they were talking about roleplaying. They were saying things that were clearly RP based like, “I want to play a healer!” or “I don’t want to do dps I want to do Support!”

They clearly do not want to play the game Anet designed, they want to play some classic trinity game and it’s painfully obvious.

If you look up Combat on the wiki, they do denote specfic roles for combat in GW2, coining them Damage, Control and Support; however the word role, may or may not have been a good name for them. I think tactic’s would be more accurate as roles make them sound like a focused playstyle. This is probably where a lot of the contraversy arises, as players see the word “roles” and want to dedicate themselves to a role. They want to be to be a dpser who burns down and opponent before them, or a controller who will utterly subdues their opponent or a supporter who’s mere presense increases their party’s performance 10-fold, and they want be praised as a credit to their party. Unfortuatly, due to several miss steps and bad shortcuts taken in combat design, the only one of them that gets to have their cake and eat it too are those that invest in damage, and unless encounters are overhauled, it will likely remain that way.

Damage roles won’t be deminished until they increase the pressure on glass cannons, the harder it is to glass, the more useful support becomes, and if support becomes important enough, support and sustain stats will start to become important. As for control, it’s in a funny place because it’s the only role with no stats directly tied to it, the only thing that’s keeping it out of the sun is defiant, which acts as a hard counter to the hard control which would trivalize encounters if left unchecked. Anet has been experimenting with ways to make mob resilient to Control, without make them immune to it. If made enemies start to move and kite so that parties simply stand in thier faces dpsing them, then control would become very useful. As an added effect I forgot to mention, the harder it is to dps, the more ranged and defense oriented weapons become useful.

(And I just wrote half an essay on my phone on the bus ;; )

That Skritt Trader in the BLTC.

1) Elementalist
2) Ranger
3) Thief

I’m having issues too. Couldn’t even respawn after I was lagged to death.

J Eberle.9312:

Yet another complaint thread, just worded differently so it isn’t deleted.

Honestly, I was looking for X:Y numerical ratios with no real intent to argue, and instead got a load of “grass is greener” posts. Probably should find some statistical site or do some leg work and gather some samples myself.

@Zelyhn: I do know a few guildies that love thier Rangers to death, but begrudgingly shelve them when doing dungeons so you can tell me if they’re playing how they want.

Lilith Ajit.6173:

I have no real response, other than, the folks in this board are not asking for heavies. They want the highest DPS, warriors and guardians are not that.

I mean in general. When you go on lfg or join some random party for w/e reason, how likely are you to be expected to adhere to some meta standard?

With a new anti-meta thread appearing every week or so, it would suggest “play how you want” parties have become a rare breed among the parties being formed. In addition, with the number of metadungeoneers on this board it paints a picture where the dungeon pugging scene is currently, “you must stack, you must wear full zerker, you must skip, you’re on thin ice if you’re not a heavy, you have 10 minutes to complete this run” groups have become the general expectation of the dungeon community, and that “play how you want” parties have been all but choked out.

So I’m curious, what would you say is the current ratio of parties that let players play how they wish, to parties that demand players to conform to the meta?

I suggest selling crafting mats you’ve amassed over your play time, just sell what you don’t think you’ll need and sells well. That said, a lot of mid-tier woods and ores sell pretty well for what they are, as with cloths and silks as players need them to make ascended mats. If you aren’t saving your laurels for anything, I suggest spending them on heavy crafting bags. In addition Dungeons are good income, just be sure to check out the meta or you’ll be frowned upon (sadly), and if you’re in guild that does missions, 10 commendations can get you a Sentinel’s Gossamer Insignia which sells very well. And there’s still also world bosses, but the scene seems to have changed some so I’d look that up. As a tip to save money, don’t waste your salvage kits on everything, and if you have enough AP you should get some free Mystic Forge Stones, which you can use for make a 250 use Mystic Salvage Kit. (Journeyman’s Kit + Master’s Kit + Fine Kit + 3 Forge Stones)

Zach.3264:

Carpboy.7145:

Zach.3264:

This is obviously a troll thread or you are incredibly new to PvP.

• Classes are different playstyles.
• Build matters.
• Player’s ability in PvP matters.
• Environment matters.

You can kill an NPC fast as a Zerk Ele.. well done.
PvP is completely different.

Yes, I’ll admit Thieves do have extremely high burst, and they are probably the best 1v1 class in-game. Ele’s on the other hand have the best AoE burst in-game.
I don’t see any Thieves going to Ele forum and complaining they died in a blob fight because an Ele was hitting them 4k’s with Fire Storm in a huge radius?

Ele can give group support and buffs.
Ele is the only class that can destroy siege far back within walls.
Ele has superior AoE.

Thief has none to little of these, I don’t see many (if any at all) threads in your sub-section by Thieves complaining?

Every class/build fits into their own slot of what it’s intended to do. Thieves are almost only for DPS as they provide little Support. Ele can do all, and at that.. within the 1 build.

I crafted a Thief to 80 2 weeks ago and as much as I enjoy it at the moment, I’m slowly getting bored of it due to being tunneled into playing full DPS.
I have a 66 Ele I occasionally work on by playing SPvP for +1 level tomes. I can’t say I’ve played much of my Ele (more than my Thief though) but I will say that it’s far more enjoyable for sure.

LOL

Thanks for that in-depth response.

Dude, he listed off nothing but NPCs in WvW, said Rangers have to micromanage their pets, and his build was loaded to the brim with human racials. What part of this is not a joke thread?

Maugetarr.6823:

Dual.8953:

BlackBeard.2873:

Phantaram.1265:

I think most people are missing the point of this thread.

Yes the meta is super tanky and within it thieves are just average. Take away the super tanky meta and it will be about thieves. Mesmer and ele, the other mobile power squishy roamers, won’t see the light of day because thieves are so far ahead of them and actually counter the mesmer and ele themselves.

There are layers of broken things in this game. The first one that needs peeled back is the tanky meta, after that there are other things that need peeled back. Thief is one of them.

Very well put, Phantaram. The damage/survivability ratio for a lot of classes need to be changed for a lot of classes, and thief is one of them. It is disgusting watching Sizer spam out evades chained together like the class is supposed to get complete immunity that lasts that long while building Zerker. The problem is that all thief defense is based on damage avoidance, so there is NO REASON to build anything but full-dps. Yes, a lot does need to be fixed about the thief class in terms of better survivability, but their highest-dps build simply has too much mobility/survivability for the damage it does.

If you dull the burst to the point that other glass cannon’s can survive it, you haven’t solved the main problem. You’ve just given Mesmer Thief’s position and possibly knocked Thieves down below Elementalist. The one of the reasons Thief players have developed in a way that they give up practically all their survivablity for damage isn’t just because they can. It’s also because they have to, if they want any hope of taking on a serious bunker. They’re low end damage is quite low, and as with their high end defenses. I can say, if you want to learn about the value of active defense in this game, role a Thief. Anyways back on topic: if they nerf Thief’s damage, they have the tone down bunkers substantially at the same time.

Which is why they should have halved (or more) the damage of LS and left the 2 boon steal, so you could strip boons or do damage, but if you just used LS over and over, you probably couldn’t have taken down anyone. It should have been made a utility skill since they were talking about how it was too effective. Now guard boon bunkers can sit relatively unphased by putting up retal and covering the important boons; we’re back in the same boat we were when they started talking about boon hate (+ higher initiative cost). Thieves would have had to complete the AA chain to CS for the decent (emphasis on decent/balanced ) damage or the utility of dodging/stealing boons. They went in the wrong direction.

True facts. I was wanting this nerf too. Sadly Anet’s record for nerfing Thief is very poor. They nerf what stand out but in the wrong way. The 4 second revealed was another one. Could have gone with Revealed on all destealth, and made this bandaid fix instead that screwed up Thief’s rotations so much that the reverted the nerf in PvE/WvW. And with the cast time on Infiltrator’s Return, they shadow step near the end of the cast instead of the beginning.

Heh, you had me there for a second.

BlackBeard.2873:

Phantaram.1265:

I think most people are missing the point of this thread.

Yes the meta is super tanky and within it thieves are just average. Take away the super tanky meta and it will be about thieves. Mesmer and ele, the other mobile power squishy roamers, won’t see the light of day because thieves are so far ahead of them and actually counter the mesmer and ele themselves.

There are layers of broken things in this game. The first one that needs peeled back is the tanky meta, after that there are other things that need peeled back. Thief is one of them.

Very well put, Phantaram. The damage/survivability ratio for a lot of classes need to be changed for a lot of classes, and thief is one of them. It is disgusting watching Sizer spam out evades chained together like the class is supposed to get complete immunity that lasts that long while building Zerker. The problem is that all thief defense is based on damage avoidance, so there is NO REASON to build anything but full-dps. Yes, a lot does need to be fixed about the thief class in terms of better survivability, but their highest-dps build simply has too much mobility/survivability for the damage it does.

If you dull the burst to the point that other glass cannon’s can survive it, you haven’t solved the main problem. You’ve just given Mesmer Thief’s position and possibly knocked Thieves down below Elementalist. The one of the reasons Thief players have developed in a way that they give up practically all their survivablity for damage isn’t just because they can. It’s also because they have to, if they want any hope of taking on a serious bunker. They’re low end damage is quite low, and as with their high end defenses. I can say, if you want to learn about the value of active defense in this game, role a Thief. Anyways back on topic: if they nerf Thief’s damage, they have the tone down bunkers substantially at the same time.

BlackBeard.2873:

bwillb.2165:

If they think that there is favoritism towards thieves, the one class that has been nerfed by community request nearly every single patch, which has had nearly no buffs to offset these nerfs… They are clearly not pro or reasonable. The pros are the ones who continue rocking thief despite hundreds of nerfs.

“Increased the base rate of initiative gain from .75 per second to 1 per second.”

For reference, this would be like saying “All elementalist skill cooldowns are reduced by 33%” and is a MASSIVE buff for a lot of builds. Yes, that is 33% more initiative, meaning you get to use your skills that much more frequently.

You can’t just look at nerfs and whine that thief skills/traits have received a large number of nerfs while at the same time ignoring major buffs that are given to the class. If you look at the net effect, these “nerfs” clearly haven’t been net-negative as the thief class has remained near-mandatory and the best (and currently only allowed) zerker class there is.

From another perspective, if thief has only received “hundreds of nerfs” and is still one of the top classes, wouldn’t logic dictate that they were just OUT OF CONTROL previously?

It doesn’t quantify like that. They lowered the max init gain and increased the base inti gain. Thus it’s commonly regarded as a nerf among those who invested heavily into it, because it did lower their peak potential.

A few questions.
-Do the skills with damage nerfs get a base damage increase?
-How do you envision the pistol nerfs would effect Pistol/Dagger’s ability to function?
-What are you thoughts on how the x/D sets are supposed to operate now, having lost their natural stealth? How is Push worth it’s cooldown?

Viking Jorun.5413:

Dual.8953:

I think this’d replace a few classes in the dungeon meta, or any place where reflects are in high demand. As temping as it sounds, I don’t think D/P should have a tool this good (unless it perhaps gets put in 30 Shadow Arts and Venomous Aura gets merged with Residual Venom. (Then it’d bar the complete glass cannons from using it, and everyone that could use it would have to choose between it and Shadow Rejuvination)(still, that may be even more of an over buff)(Maybe if it had a 15 second internal Cooldown to match our smoke wall.)

If you’ve played other classes, having to choose between two powerful grandmaster traits is always how things are balanced. You’re either choosing survivability or reflects.

The thing of it is, we’d be able to attain near 100% reflect uptime is this applied to Black Powder, blowing other reflect users out of the water in that role, which is a major deal in many encounters in this game. Also, reflects turn defense into offense. The only things that would be able to harm us would be ranged Beam skills and AoEs.

So they chose the Feather? Not bad looking.

I think this’d replace a few classes in the dungeon meta, or any place where reflects are in high demand. As temping as it sounds, I don’t think D/P should have a tool this good (unless it perhaps gets put in 30 Shadow Arts and Venomous Aura gets merged with Residual Venom. (Then it’d bar the complete glass cannons from using it, and everyone that could use it would have to choose between it and Shadow Rejuvination)(still, that may be even more of an over buff)(Maybe if it had a 15 second internal Cooldown to match our smoke wall.)

Swagg.9236:

Grevender.9235:

Dragon’s Tooth targeted? no thanks. Just make it land 20% faster and add 6% more burning damage, and it’s perfect.

Skills that require the player to aim them are skills that possess a skill cap. This game deserves a higher skill cap than it has currently.

Making skills auto-aim for you just turns combat into a button-mashing fest.

I’d like to add, you miss the value of an aimable Dragon’s Tooth. When it’s aimable it can be used as a detourant. A Soft CC so to speak that will make your opponent steer around it.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

met.9653:

thiefs are easy kills if you dont panic and immobilise them. Mesmers got nerfe. Only problem is healing signet, this thing should only heal on target hit just like signet of malice.

Signet of malice, much like the ele heal do their healing on attack and cast. The attack doesn’t have to hit. So by this thinking 100 blades, whirling axe, flurry, whirlwind attack, triple shot, longbow auto attack will generate more healing than what signet would. If your going down..just throw channeled attacks. If they approach you they get bashed to death, if they back off you heal up unharmed. Great suggestion. Love it.

Despite its Tooltip. Signet of Malice is on hit, not on cast. Signet of Restoration works similarly only it for the initial successful cast. Tested them both out just now to be sure.

I’m curious how you’re supposed to hit anything with Lightning Strike if this change came to be. One can probably walk out the hit area easily,

thefantasticg.3984:

kyubi.3620:

What tells you my view is crazy? While it may just be an oppinion that oppinion is as good as yours and is worth to be heard. Maybe you think fight should be as short as possible but i think a boss cant possibly be challanging if it doesnt actualy get some chance to damage the player.

Because the difference between not crazy and crazy is that it is crazy to force other players to play how you want them to play through the Devs instead of letting them play how they want.

Kind of funny saying that. Because thanks to the dps meta this game’s pve scene has gone from people playing as they like with whatever build they like to. “Play how you want… So long as it’s a zerk mesmer, guardian or warrior”. The farther you deviate from this, the harder it becomes to get in on a dungeon run. I’d be willing to bet some necros have to wait hours to find a group that’d accept/join them.

Not sure all, but at glance, take a look at the Arah mask

While I’m not opposed to this, I can see how it could potentially flip the problem to the other side. Trolls can exist on both.
Their abrasiveness makes me wonder if all the dungeon meta buzz that’s been going around lately has finally made it to the pugs.
The Pug scene being overrun by aggressive play how you wanters. Wonder what discussion that’d spark here.

Got my Ele all customized

Harper.4173:

Bunker : Guardian > Warrior
Support and healing allies : Ele/ Guardian > Warrior
Solo roaming in WvW : Mesmer > Warrior
Single target damage ( PVP) : Thief / Mesmer > Warrior
Single target damage ( PVE) : Ele/Thief/Guardian > Warrior
Might stacking: Ele/ Guardian > Warrior
Utility ( PVE – blocks, reflects, boons): Guardian> Warrior
Condition damage: Necro/Engineer> Warrior
AOE damage : Necros/Eles/Engis > Warrior

Read it. Understand it.
Maybe realize warriors aren’t OP.

Here’s an interesting concept. Even if Warrior isn’t absolute best in all those areas listed, he’s usually near the best. He has all of his fundamental needs covered, and they removed his original weakness, to shoehorn him into to condi meta. All the other classes in the game have thier strengths paired with equally promenent weaknesses. Warrior’s managed to avert this by simply being “very good” at all the fundaments of combat in the game. That coupled with their ease of use has rendered Warrior as the ideal pick across all modes of play this game has to offer.
To summerize: Warrior is viewed as OP, because it’s the only class in the game that has all of its bases covered (and well covered no less). Every other class has some glaring weakness.

All balance changes mentioned in the Ready Up livestream should be added tomorrow, although, they stated there’s a slight chance there will be some revisions. Also the devs have stated that there will be many more balance changes that weren’t announced during the live stream session.
I’d drop a link but I’m on my phone.

OneBloke.7264:

I think the problem is not Shadow’s rejuvenation itself but the amount of stealth thieves can easily get. This combined with Shadow’s rejuvenation and in 99% of the cases Shadow’s Embrace as well, makes thieves extremely hard to kill. As pointed out previously not all classes can easily apply aoe damage and thus depend on having a target to deal damage, say you apply an immobilize to finish off a thief in low health, the thief can simply CnD, this will remove the immobilize and let them heal back up with Shadow’s Rejuvenation. I think these two traits are a broken mechanic given the amount of stealth available to thieves. So much condition removal and healing just from being stealthed where they are almost invulnerable is just zero risk and full reward.

If we compare this to for example Healing Signet on warriors (which people have also complained about) you can see the problem.
HS is always active, a warrior can be blocking or using endure pain and this will heal them. Now SR isn’t always active but it can be active for as long a thief wants it to be and not only will they heal for nearly the same amount as HS but it wil also remove conditions with Shadow’s Embrace.
Furthermore a warrior running healing signet is still vulnerable to all damage sources, a warrior using SR is already invulnerable to everything apart from the odd aoe damage that hits them, even if u managed to lay good condition damage simply entering stealth will clean these conditions. HS has absolutely zero condition cleaning .

You’ve glossed over two major points. One. The HS Warrior is healing, blocking and cleaning while actively CC chaining/mashing your face in. The SR Thief is hiding while your skills come off cooldown.
Two. Cover Conditions can very easily overload Shadow’s Embrace. One condition every three seconds is good, but not incredible.

Geiir.7603:

People are still having trouble with stealth, really?! I don’t have any trouble fighting most thieves, but there are a few good ones – and these are nearly impossible to kill because of the stealth mechanic. I’ve had ideas since launch that could fix the entire thing, so let’s drop them out here – again.

1. Make it impossible for stealth to stack (does not apply to stacking through utility skills). This would fix the only build that people complain about; Dagger/Pistol. The only problem with this build is the ability to stack stealth by using Black Powder and Heartseek several times through it.

2. Give the thief the “Revealed” debuff wether they attack from stealth or not.

These changes will make the Thief way more tactical to play. It will heighten the skill floor and actually challenge the player to think twice before stealthing. Us thieves would have to either attack or retreat when we stealthed, and since we know that we will get the revealed debuff we need to think fast and figure wether we want to go for the kill or gtfo.

This comes from a Thief that have mained it since beta with way too many hours on it, and heavy use in all game modes.

I like these nerfs too. This from another player who’s mained Thief since beta. (I’d also like my 2 boons back on LS, increasing the init cost and/or lowering the damage to make if less used is far better the making it borderline useless against boon bunkers).
Anyways, in my experience with other thieves while roaming on a plethora of other classes, my best advice is be ready to react and don’t overreact. If a dodge is all you’ll need to survive a certain hit, only use that dodge, and save your other CDs. Most opponents will take off if you make it clear this fight will be grueling. And if you’re a zerger, you probably should be running for survivability anyways. My other piece of advice is always be on guard, you never know what’s just over the hill in WvW.

notabot.3497:

Elrey.5472:

notabot.3497:

I think its rather telling that the most toxic posters in the this thread are Elrey and Nemesis.

Is there a thing such as “reverse” elitism, a sort of a race to the bottom to avoid being called “meta” or a net build?

See our point of view: For us the toxic players are the ones forcing everyone else to use their meta builds… or kick. Nevertheless, let’s not take it personal and let’s focus on the topic.

I’m not really sure how my post was off topic. In a point, counterpoint argument is it not correct to challenge the assertions of the opposing side? In this case the individuals who have been railing against dungeon elitists being toxic are coming into a thread to help a dungeon new-player, and doing so with a negative attitude. The perception of dungeons being full of elitist jerks is also spread by people similar to you. Yeah, some dungeon runners are elitists, but that doesn’t mean they are being elitist about the same things. I see bitterness AND elitism in some of the anti-zerk/stack/skip faction, just about doing things as “intended”, upholding a trinity concept, or some other idea that they have in their head about how the game should be played. At least the RPers keep to themselves and its kind of fun to make fun of them and they generally don’t mind because they are having their own fun. But the guys who want to do things the “legit” way? They are full of nothing but bitterness and tears. Nobody is forcing you to pick up the current meta build and join arahSC groups, you can always form your own groups. Don’t like getting kicked? Don’t join parties that advertise specific things you don’t meet, and don’t be surprised that the average “P1&3” group is just looking for a smooth and fast farm run.

That being said at least you are mostly still having fun, even though you are letting those other guys having fun bother you for some reason. I don’t think the same is true of Nemesis, he is sounding awfully burnt out these days.

My experience? I went into dungeons running after doing the courteous thing and finding out how to run them and how to play my class. I let the other players know I was new to the paths, and didn’t take it personal if I got kicked. Which I did get kicked a few times. No big deal, they are playing how they want and I don’t have the right to impose on that. I checked my ego and entitlement at the door and went along with how the group did things.

I might add that most pick up groups do things the same way, so teaching people who are going to pug how to do it the “legit no stacking, zerk elitist go away” way is a disservice. Yeah, most pug members aren’t going to be full zerk , but they in general will bring reasonable dps (as best as they feel comfortable running) builds unless they are coming into the dungeons with ill informed preconceived notions or misinformation spread by people who don’t like/know how the game is and want to force a meta based on how they think it should be. If you want to play a certain way, form a group with those parameters. Sure you will get the random zerk skipper/stacker who doesn’t read the LFG message, but that’s kinda funny considering how often clerics/bearbows/tanks try to join advertised zerk speed clear groups.

From an outsider’s perspective I think the reason their so disgruntled is because they feel the status quo should be anything goes parties, and feel alienated because the status quo has become Zerker speed runs. Basically they want it so “play as you want” group are the everywhere and “meta” groups are a less common occurrence. Or to restate, they don’t want to feel like they’re being treated as a 2nd class player just because they don’t want to play a meta build.

Aza.2105:

Stx.4857:

As far as which professions need the most player skill to succeed with, thief is already towards the top, probably second to eles, so I see no reason why they should be harder to play.

With that said, it would make sense to me if a thief became revealed after striking a blocking target.

Whenever you see lots of flies you know there is crap nearby. Thief is the class you see in the most abundance when it comes to roaming and solo ganking. Why? Are you going to lie to yourself and say that these players purposely picked the hardest class to roam with? No, you know that would be a lie. The reality is they picked thief because its the easiest class to roam and solo gank with. That has the least amount of risk involved.

You can apply this logic to can be applied to any aspect of the game.

Uh no, that’d be Warrior at this point. You only see so many solo Thieves in WvW because they have no where else to go, in most cases. Poor at zerging and have a stigma against them in PvE, roamings the only place they can somewhat stand out.

Of all the Thief traits you listed, the only ones they’d miss would be Pain Response and Slowed Pulse. And those would only be missed by non-stealth Thieves due to thier limited cleansing options. What would you propose for them? (And the other three are viewed as more handicap then helpful)

1. Defiant
2. Mob’s low rate of attack
3. Larcenous Strike’s boon steal nerf, rather nerfing the damage or increasing the cost.
4. Not going with the Revealed no matter what nerf
5. Buffing Warrior so much its weaknesses were negated.

Ahlen.7591:

kyubi.3620:

What about nerfing endurance regeneration on all class and make it so that zerk can no longuer rely on endurence regeneration alone to survive?

Because that’s dumbing down the game.

How so exactly? They could break down and get toughness, or they could rely more on alternative forms of active defenses (blocks, blinds, stuns, dazes, invuls, protection, regen, weakness, ect) The increased pressure could allow for more roles in parties like pure support and pure control. Dps wouldn’t be the lone standing “do everything” spec it is now. And it wouldn’t be like the holy trinity because every class has access to these roles in their own unique way. All the devs would have to do then is fix Defiant and Conditions.
It’d be nice if the current Pugging environment allowed for a wide array of talents instead of demanding nothing less then max dps.

Kadin.2356:

I’ve said this on other threads, it doesn’t need to be stealth. I’d be happy with it just poping Aegis + Regen or something. Might be too hard/unbalancing to make “unbreakable stealth”.

That or a smoke field.

Yes please. The previous nerf to LS rendered it terrible at its own job. From a PvE standpoint even because the boon strip made a nice team role.

Is a whole second really that fair? Both the Melee stealth skills are heavily dependent on positioning, so in a practical situation one can assume the thief will have to position him/herself which will eat up time. Maybe have unsuccessful attempts cost 500 ms instead? Or up base stealth duration to kitten (First one’s way less likely to unbalance things imo)

This won’t effect my playstyle so I’d be fine with it. (Usually not in stealth longer then 1 second anyways) Say in exchange for some buffs in other places. Re-Buffing LS or changing it so it prioritizes Stability and Protection would be nice. As well as other buffs.

chungiee.8764:

ensoriki.5789:

There are certain aspects of professions that are weak, and certain aspects that are too strong. However bringing things to the level of “too strong” doesn’t make for a better game.
If I create a skill that one shots everyone, I could give everyone a one shot skill as well, but then the game just turns into 1 shots and is boring. Or I could acknowledge that something is stronger than it should be and tone it down not just so that things are equal but so that overall you have a better experience playing the game.

Sure, I understand that argument but skills don’t “one-shot” everyone.

However, taking your example – if everyone was given a “one-shot kill” button but was also given a “prevent one-shot kill” button, wouldn’t that promote more active play ?

Then you’d have the mass pvp version of Dive Kick. The game would be oversimplified.

Are venom’s focus really Condi damage? True most of them apply conditions, but only two of them actually damage. I figured they were more about Control because 4 of them have effects that debilitate/discourage movement and the last utility one suppresses healing.

Been suggested before. Still want it.

I like these. Particularly how it gives S/D back it’s utility role while adding some risk/reward mechanics.

Leamas.5803:

DanteZero.9736:

In terms of caps for conditions, it was explained that it’s a limitation of the technology since each stack of a condition has intensity or duration constantly updating for each and every single player.

That’s a cop-out. With today’s processing power there’s no reason for this to exist. There was lots of speculation around the 250 item stack limit in the bank too, and the staunch insisted it was a programmatic limitation, even against all the evidence that it was not. Now you can buy bank stack expansions in the gem store. The 250 is simply an arbitrary number which is exactly the same as the 25 for the condition stack…arbitrary. It’s not like it’s complex math, in fact, I would argue the cap complicates the process because they need some sort of algorithm to determine which conditions to apply and which to ignore, rather than just applying them and letting them time out. If they are at the limitation of their hardware and simply cannot increase the condition stack then all damage needs to be reworked because condition damage is broken in PvE.

It is a technical limitation because Condition Damage is a stat. If all condi damage didn’t scale with stats, they could make the limit way higher but as it stands the system would have to calculate every condition on a target, and the condi stat of it’s caster every second. In a fight like a world boss where they always have max conditions on the boss that would create a massive delay in whatever function dictates damage.

Wraith.8916:

If most the warriors you know are using healing surge over HS then why all the delicious QQ tears over HS? And what the point of this post other than to troll?

Mostly general curiousity honestly.

A common arguement I see from players defending HS is that Warriors need it to stay viable. If that’s the case, why do most Warriors I know in game seem to favour Healing Surge?