Guild Wars 2

Methal.9045:

Fermi.2409:

How is a subscription pay to win? And the game doesn’t even have a subscription. You can just play the game for free now, with some limitations

well you could always PLAY the game for free, getting the game was a different story.

Glad to see you can at least get the core game without forking over your first born. Though i’ve never agreed with applying account restrictions.

I do like a lot of the changes i’m reading about though.

Forking over your firstborn, that equates to about £40 right? and sometimes as little as $10 on sale.
Just pretend the free to play accounts are like a trial version of most other games except this isn’t just one level and doesnt expire. It’s a great way to introduce new players to GW2 nothing more. Lots will buy it on the strength of that and others wont and perhaps others still will be happy with just the free account.

I do very much like the foldy up Leyline staff skin but perhaps it’s more Druidy

BrunoBRS.5178:

snip

As more and more ways to counter stealth make it into the game, it makes sense to compensate the loss of an entire trait line + several skills/utilities by adding something to compensate.

Personally, i think a feature creep in this case would be adding a 2nd stealth that is immune to reveal not passive bonuses for being locked out of half of your class.

One single Engineer with 1 trait(line) and 2 utilities can keep a thief locked out of stealth indefinatley No other class can be locked out/denied such a huge part of their class an entire fight so i don’t understand why people are OK with this, even calling it ‘fair play’.

I suggest that Thieves need to have some kind of counter play to revealed, not a power creep but something that compensates Thieves for having such a huge part of their class mechanic denied for a period of time.

When revealed Thieves possibly loose:

• Access to some of their biggest attacks
• Initiative regeneration
• Condition Removal
• Cloaked in Shadows regeneration
• Passive -25% damage reduction from stealth
• 50% speed in stealth
• Their main survival mechanic
  etc

So it doesn’t seem quite right that one single class/player can pretty much stack permanent reveal onto the Thief with impunity by the press of an Aoe button.

I think by building bonuses into some of the weaker traits, perhaps one per trait line similar to ‘Revealed Training’ (but much more impactful) in deadly arts, to perhaps give pause to whether its a good idea or not to reveal the thief.

So for example – thief gains 1 stack of might per second while revealed. Normal duration of reveal wouldn’t make this super OP – 3 or 4 stacks but a 15 /20 sec reveal would make applying such long duration reveal more dangerous.

Other trait lines could be things such as Stability on reveal, stacking damage bonus on reveal, Resistance on reveal , Super speed on reveal and so on.

Nocta.5274:

Thief is like top4 in pvp. Stop saying we’re weak because you dislike what Thief’s role is.

This argument again, thief isn’t under powered because top teams always have one…well i’m sorry that’s a completely dumb automated retort. What’s the % of GW2 players in the ‘top teams’ – very small id think.

Your average player and even more so with the massive F2P influx have probably never watched a league match nor do they know what a thief’s supposed ‘role’ is in pvp. They just want to go into pvp have a few fights and play with their friends on an even footing. I know this because since F2P was introduced six of my friends have joined GW2, two of which I’ve tried to dissuade from playing thieves, which in itself is a shame and speaks volumes about the class.

Having any class in Gw2 that stands very little chance in a 1v1 no matter how well you play it isn’t good for the game, especially at a time when we have the opportunity to get new players hooked on PVP and create a healthier environment for us all.

Zero Day.2594:

#stillinMetaStillOP

:P

(Better get a head start on this “you guys were in meta since day one, and still are, so you aren’t underpowered” thing)

Problem with this mindset is it only applies to a few % of people especially with the huge influx of f2p accounts.
An awful lot of people will go into pvp without ever seeing a league match or knowing what a thiefs role is ‘supposed’ to be, they just want to go into pvp and have fun fighting other players and what’s wrong with that?
So all the pro’s who can only retort by saying ‘thief is fine – its still meta’ the average player really doesn’t care about that and they should be able to fight others at least on a fair playing field.

DD feels much much better overall from last bwe, looking forward to seeing the finalized dodge animations.
The worst part for me is the staff idle animation, i don’t know if its just human female but when i turn my camera my head goes on backwards :P (turn with rt mouse)
Also i think the 5 seconds added to the block was a bit excessive for a 1 second block.
But GJ so far mostly

It will probably get changed to ‘copy all boons from your pet onto you’ since copying boons from yourself to your pet is already in the traits.
boons you copy from yourself to your pet in the trait line are all gated in duration so this would make it less OP copying them back.

The worst part is players should be excited about an expansion and most thieves i know just aren’t.
Elite specs will raise the bar even higher while we fall further and further behind.
At least give us some decent condi cleanse Karl:
Hide in Shadows removes all damaging condis
Traited tricks remove 2
Shadow return cures 2
Channeled Vigor removes 1 condi per pulse
At the very least!

Thought it might be fun and ease some of the doom and gloom if we theory crafted what our dream elite spec would be.

Here’s mine and i think it could have an interesting mechanic.

The Shadow

New weapon; Off hand sword

The mechanic is you have an energy bar over your dodge bars with ’pip’s corresponding with how much initiative you have (12 or 15 traited)

The Energy bar (Lets call them ‘Shadow Shards’) is used to go into Shadow Form (think perhaps black poly gem or some such for looks)

Shadow Form would be accessed by f3 .

Shadow Form
spending initiative while in combat gives ‘shadows shards’
spending initiative while in shadow form consumes the ‘shadow shards’
being in Shadow Form allows the thief to see stealthed enemies
Projectiles pass through you (this could be super op and is open for debate :P )

Skills: Off hand Sword

3: Shadow Dance – Step in and out of the shadows dealing damage
evade 1/2 sec – dmg – evade 1/2 sec

4: Shadow Guard – Block attacks 3s, if you successfully block a melee attack in the duration, return the damage back to the attacker and stun them (1s). (ranged attacks block for the duration)

5: Shadow Assault – Shadowstep to enemy and perform 3 quick attacks then return
The first attack blinds the target. If you take damage during shadow assault the return is canceled.

Utilities
Soothing Shadows – Heal for a small ammount and heal more for each shadow shard consumed

Cleansing Shadows – Cure a condition for each shard consumed.

Shadow Run – Breaks Stun/immobilize/cripple. Become an invulnerable vaporous shadow and travel forward at speed. Travel 100m per shadow shard consumed.

Shadow Meld – Become one with the shadows gaining 1s of stealth for each shard consumed

Shadow Warp – Consume all your shards and gain 0.5s of quickness and 0.5s superspeed per shard

Elite – Shadow Surge
Consume all shadow shards gaining
1% damage per shard
1% attack speed per shard
1 might per shard

Traits

Adept Minor
Gain access to f3- shadow form, off hand sword and shadow utilities.

Adept
Deal 10% more damage while wielding a sword

Evading an attack restores some endurance

Take Reduced damage per unspent ‘shadow shard’ (-1% per shard)

Master Minor
Gain Might when you dodge

Master
Deal extra damage when you have no shadow shards (10%)

Gain a Shadow Shard when you successfully evade an attack

Going into Shadow form removes conditions

Grandmaster Minor
Your movement speed is increased while wielding a sword (25%)

Grand Master
Gain Might when you use a shadowstep ability

Shadow Armor – Gain Protection (2s) when you sucessfully evade an attack

Skulk in shadows – gain resistance while in stealth – drains 1 ini every second (this could synergise with ’Shadow rejuvenation, nullifying the ini gain from that trait, it would also help thief survive the insane aoe conditions currently in game)

Notes

Shadowform is not an extra life bar but an extra initiative bar.
(This is not as OP as it sounds as you would be constantly spending shadow shards anyway and inside shadowform the shards would not regenerate)

At zero shards you drop out of shadowform.

You gain Shadow Shards for spending initiative while in combat on a 1 for 1 conversion.

You begin with an empty shard bar and each attack you do in combat fills it (so for eg heartseeker would give you 3 shards)

Shards cannot be gained while in shadowform.

Utilities also spend the shards (becoming more powerful per shard spent)
So it’s a trade off all the time.
Build them up and decide whether to spend them on a utility or shadow form.

Shadowform can see stealthed enemies for the duration (not reveal or fully see them, but see them how they see themselves when stealthed – thieves would be a transparent clear body, mesmers would have the pink tinge)

So that’s it basically, Sword off hand thief that focuses on shadowsteps

Christonya.3856:

S/D will never be brought back, because staff exists now. If SD is good, staff won’t be, and vica versa, but since our elite spec is centered around staff… Staff is going to be good, not SD.

SD can be good it just needs its role defining more.
Crippling Strike should also remove a boon (not steal)

Larcenous Strike reverted back to stealing 2 boons and precastable

This would give some control over which boons you steal and help with this boon power creep every class seems to have now (which is getting worse with elite specs)

Infiltrators Strike/Return needs initiative cost reducing or conditions removed increasing to 2 (also remove range restriction on infiltrators return back to how it used to be to fix the terrain issues, its so much clunkier than it used to be)

The old changes may have been justified when they were done but when traits were reworked made builds much more powerful, reverting the old changes would be a nice start helping SD thief have a role.

’Ranger taunt isn’t close to being a real problem, because pets can’t be told to go to a specific place. ’

try ‘Guard’ utility

Thief utilities don’t have a corresponding tool belt skill (5s protection 4sec water field on heal….6 sec reveal on 20s cool down) per utility …just saying

You’re all over reacting ..at least we get Dash and 2s extra swiftness on dodge!

i’d vote for a longbow ranged support weapon (Kudzu fits sooo good with Legendary centaur theme)
Or possibly a support main hand to compliment shield off (scepter or axe?)

Karl McLain.5604:

As for a shadowstep dodge: It’s not really in-theme for the daredevil, being a more of a physical-moving type of specialization. We’ve definitely talked about it internally.

While i obviously respect your design decisions and vision for each elite spec, personally i would have liked Elite professions to have their own theme and enhance/augment/have synergy with current traits and weapon set (the warrior Elite spec does this pretty well)

I think you could still achieve the physical style theme of the elite but have different ways to achieve it. On some of the livestreams you spoke about the top/middle/bottom of certain elite traits having a definite theme (such as Reaper) and it would be nice to have Daredevil follow suit. Perhaps Gambit /Daredevil/Nightcrawler

Anyway this was just some ideas I had for traits that might have synergy with existing weapon sets and trait lines (just in case you needed ideas for new GM traits hoho)

As others have said give a toggle dodge button on f3 f4 f5
Add a daze to staff 4 because it needed something extra and see below
Add new GM traits (ideas below)
Remove vulnerability from staff auto attack 3rd chain and add an evade

Traits GM
Shadow Armor – Gain Protection (2s) when you sucessfully evade an attack

Skulk in shadows – gain resistance while in stealth – drains 1 ini every second (this could synergise with ’Shadow rejuvenation, nullifying the ini gain from that trait, it would also help thief survive the insane aoe conditions currently in game)

Physical fitness – Staff and Physical skills deal more damage (1% per unspent initiative)

GM Minor
Endurance Thief – Gain Endurance when you succesfully steal from an enemy

Traits Master
Passive Defense Take reduced damage per initiative (1 ini = (-) 1% dmg)

Slip away – Gain stealth (2s) and superspeed (2 secs) when you daze a foe

(this would give old sets like PP SP ways to get stealth and also staff if you added a daze to staff 4)
Escapist’s Absolution – Remove a condition when you evade an attack

Master Minor
Driven Fortitude – Gain Health when you sucessfully evade an attack

Traits Adept
Staff Master – Gain a stacking toughness buff while wielding a staff (400 toughness) resets on gaining stealth or swapping weapons (this is not crazy – scrapper has a 500 toughness buff)

Quickital Wits – Critical hits reduce weapon swap (by 1 sec – 1 sec cool down)

Brawlers Tenacity – Gain Endurance when you first activate a physical skill. Physical skills have a reduced cooldown 20%

Adept Minor
Gain access to the physical skill catagory, enhanced dodges, staff weapon type and your maximum endurance threshold is increased.

I think each line on these traits has a separate flavor – tank -evasive-dmg, they augment current weapon sets and existing traits and keep in theme with the physical premise.

(PS Daredevil already has a shadowstep with steal)

Karl McLain.5604:

Fade.5904:

So does this mean Dash will still use the Warrior GS animation but now shorter?
Cant imagine this will look anything but clunky and juddery which is a shame since thief dodge looks so nice usually.
Cant you just make it a shadowstep for the old distance? One that’s instant but add 3/4 sec evade during and after?
A shadowstep would fit better with some existing thief sets and not be as likely to launch you off cliffs..

Dash, right now, is no longer the greatsword charge and will just run you in whichever direction you desire, while evading. As indicated, it’s in flux!

As for a shadowstep dodge: It’s not really in-theme for the daredevil, being a more of a physical-moving type of specialization. We’ve definitely talked about it internally. Here’s some of the collective thoughts on it:
Theory-wise, if we were to implement Shadowstep in lieu of dodge, you more than likely wouldn’t get any evade frames attached to it, being as it’s instant movement… Unless there’s a cast time to it. Typically with dodge-roll design, you’re only allowed to evade so long as you don’t have control. Example: stand in place and evade while ‘charging’ your shadowstep, or begin a dodge and get a few evade frames, then again when you land at the spot. In addition, there’s many areas in the game where you’d want to move the distance (I.E. standing on top of a rock), but simply couldn’t move at all because there’s no valid path and the shadowstep would fail.

Thanks for the reply Karl but i’m not sure i understand what you’re saying correctly re cast times and travel distance. How would shadow stepping from point a to b differ from ‘warrior gs run’ from point a -b aside from it being instant. As for the evade frames i thought something like Evasive Mirror from mesmer traits, you do the instant Shadwstep and then get the evade frames with a blur like effect.

Also DD is only one trait line in thief and staff only one weapon set, so you have access to several weapon swap sets that do have shadowsteps, sb sd sp pd dp so i cant see how adding a shadowstep would break the feel of DD.

Anyway, good luck with implementing whatever you guys decide.

So does this mean Dash will still use the Warrior GS animation but now shorter?
Cant imagine this will look anything but clunky and juddery which is a shame since thief dodge looks so nice usually.
Cant you just make it a shadowstep for the old distance? One that’s instant but add 3/4 sec evade during and after?
A shadowstep would fit better with some existing thief sets and not be as likely to launch you off cliffs..

Perhaps wait until you’ve had a chance at least to test them before making suggestions on how to improve something you’ve never tried?

Another idea would be to make the dodges behave differently if you have a target or not.

If you have no target- perform a regular dodge
If you have a target – perform the enhanced dodge and actually move towards your target with all of them.

That should fix any issues changing dash to a shadowstep might bring up pathing wise, it would create a new gap closer, stop you flying off in all directions and it would give you a choice whether to use the enhanced dodges or not depending on the circumstances.

Personally i think this would make the new dodges feel much smoother and look a lot less dumb if your actually traveling towards your target. It would allow you to dodge without doing area damage (for traveling / dodging in shadow refuge/ when stealthed)

Please make ‘Dash’ a shadowstep instead of the clunky run animation! or leave it as the old dodge animation but add 2 secs super speed or some such.

Out of the three dodges, Dash feels by far the worst animation wise. It would be nice to be able to use daredevil traits without the regular dodge animation changing.

How about on Dash trait, leaving the regular dodge ani in place and maybe adding 2sec superspeed?

I think the traits don’t need changing, they need moving

The problem is that Alacrity is basically a freebie, making your shatter skills cooldown superfast and making superfast clone generation more desirable.
Alacrity should be a spec choice, competing with Chronomancer clone generation traits, allowing you to keep the individual traits stronger.

Move Flow of time to Master major trait- keep it 1sec
Move Sieze the moment to master minor
Move Improved alacrity to GM major – keep it 33%
Keep Illusionary Reversion at 1 clone = more intuitive.

The problem isn’t that you can make too many clones with DE + Illusionary reversion, it’s that you can shatter too fast with those traits + free Alacrity.

Swapping the traits around so the summon traits and alacrity traits compete makes the problem of generating too many clones too fast and shatter skills cooling down too fast null and void.

Clone generation is normally gated behind shatter recharge, so all the clone generation traits combined wont do any good if you’re just overwriting clones, unable to shatter them fast enough and shatter skills recharging faster wont make a difference if you cant generate enough clones to keep up with shatter cooldown.

This way it keeps traits tidy and meaningful without making them OP because they can’t be combined.

Choosing traits is so much better when its a tough choice.

I think Revenant should have NO COOLDOWNS whatsoever.
For a class based around an energy system, cooldowns seem like a timid way of balancing it.
The energy cost of everything should be balanced around no cooldowns, even heals and legend swapping. Personally i think this would open up a much more fluid gameplay and make the class truely diverse.
Do you burn all your energy on dps or manage it efficiently for sustain and healing.

For eg. Heals could cost a full 100% energy but the no cooldown would offset this (numbers would have to be balanced around this)

Swapping legends could still revert you to 50% energy so no heal spamming would be possible but you’d never feel locked into just auto attacking (and swapping legends should reward the decision to do so)

Balance the energy numbers and i don’t see how this would be impossible to do.

Also
Add a 1/2 second evade on crit to sword 3
Keep auto attacks weak but each should restore more energy

Hmmm but warriors already have mace/mace and physical skills and i think dirty fighting would suit a thief more but ty for reply

Thought it might be fun and possibly even helpful to Anet to come up with a few ideas for possible future specializations. I tried to keep my idea in flavor of thieves as a profession and Anets desire to use existing utility groups (and tried not to make them too OP) It’s probably a useless post but i wanted to get the ideas out of my head anyway :P

The trait lines i wanted to give a definate flavor for each like Anet has been doing with the trait overhall, the top line is about tanking, the middle is stealth and bottom is dps.

So here is
Dirty Fighter!

Mace/Mace – Physical Utilities

stealth attack
Blackjack – (from behind/side) knockdown – 1 sec
Sap – (from front – daze 3 secs – 0 dmg – does not break stealth)

1) Slug 1/2 sec (dmg your foe) -Slam 1/2 sec (dmg your foe and cripple 1 secs) – Smash 1 sec – Dmg your foe and gain 1 initiative
2) Enfeeble – Weakness – 2s – 2 ini (short duration low cost weakness to help tanking)
3) Payback – Block and return the incoming damage from the next attack – 5 ini
4) Lobber – Throw mace knocking down and immobilizing your foe
5) Clobber – Stun (2 secs) and blind (5 secs) your foe – 6 ini

Traits GM:
Bare Knuckle Fighter – Brass Knuckles deal 10% more damage and skills cost less initiative (- 1 ini)

Skulk in shadows – gain resistance while in stealth – drains 1 ini every second (this could synergise with ’Shadow rejuvenation, nullifying the ini gain from that trait)

Physical fitness – Physical skills deal more damage (1% per initiative) and effects last longer (10% per initiative)

GM Minor:
Sneak attack -When blocked you have a 25% chance to activate a free ‘suckerpunch’ (unblockable)

Traits Master:
Take reduced damage per initiative (1 ini = (-) 1% dmg)

Slip away – Gain stealth and superspeed (2 secs) when you stun a foe

Armor Breaker – deal more damage to heavily armored foes +1% dmg per every 100 armor over 2500 armor

Master Minor:
Quickital Wits – Critical hits reduce weapon swap (by 1 sec – 1 sec cool down)

Traits Adept:
Clobber Long – Gain a stacking toughness buff while wielding a mace (400 toughness) resets on gaining stealth or swapping weapons

Elusive – Stealth removes cripple, immobilize, chill and slow.

Street Smarts – Physical Skills recharge 20% faster, deal 5% extra dmg to stunned foes

Adept Minor:
Gravel – Blinding a foe applies vulnerability (3 stacks) and torment (2 stacks)

Physical Skills:
Jewel Heist – a swift kick between your opponents legs – stun 1 sec – cripple 5 secs

Throw Dirt – Throw dirt in a ‘aoe cone’ blinding up to 5 foes, you gain 1 initiative for each foe blinded

Roundhouse kick – Knock back and Daze (1s) all foes in 240 radius

Flying fist – Leap at your foe crippling them (3s) – 900m

Elite (Physical) – Brass Knuckles – channeled – drains initiative (1 ini per sec)
Replaces 5 weapon skills with new skills (much like rampage)
Gain revealed debuff for duration of channel
(this would synergize with ’revealed training)
‘White’ hits apply bleeding and critical hits apply confusion while Brass Knuckles is channeled.

1) One -Two – a series of quick jabs (grants 1 ini if either critically hit (1 sec cooldown)
2) Lefthook – a quick lefthook that has a 50% chance to daze your foe – 4 ini
3) Blindside – a blow to the side of the head blinding your foe – 3 secs – 4 ini
4) Suckerpunch – an unblockable right hook – always critically hits against targets that are blocking. – 4 ini
5) Haymaker – 8 ini – Launch your foe

Due to the way initiative works i tried to have fun with how traits and skills could behave, such as channeled skills that drain ini, taking less dmg per initiative and conditions lasting longer per initiative. Anyway hope you like and would love to hear other ideas people may have

I think Chaotic Dampening should have a 3% cooldown but also reduce the cooldown of chaos armor (staff 4 only) and the Trident 3 skill by a flat 20%.

I think this would combat getting too much chaos armor via utilities and put focus more on the staff traits. Ill TRY to work out the math but i’m probably way off so please forgive me if i am.

Chaos Storm 35s cooldown – The chaos armor for leaping through this is 5s duration so

3% would = a 15% cooldown = 5.25 seconds = 29.75 recharge for Chaos Storm

Then if you add Chaos armor (staff 4) immediately after the leap chaos armor you get
a 30% cooldown of Chaos Storm (-)10.5 seconds = 24.5 sec recharge

(Personally i don’t think this is OP as you have to activate 3 staff skills including a leap finisher to achieve it and Elementalist cooldown traits are a flat 33% for doing nothing and they also add nice bonuses like 10% damage)

So on to Chaos Armor
Chaos Armor if a flat 20% was reduced = 28 second cooldown
Chaos armor duration 5 seconds
Conditional recharge of 3% on 28 seconds = 4.3 second recharge
Gives us a total of 23.7 sec recharge (call it 24 secs which is extremely close to the same recharge now as Chaos storm with both leap finisher and chaos armor added)
Synergy!! pmg! it would recharge pretty much the same as Chaos storm

This would give a decent recharge to staff skills without making them too OP by taking other ethereal field utilities to leap through to give HUGE reductions in staff skills as every Ethereal leap finisher would only reduce this way by 15%

edit- I forgot to add, this (the flat 20% reduction to staff 4) would also help reduce Chaos Storm for those situations when you aren’t able to leap through it such as in WvW casting it into a zerg to etc

1) I suppose it depends on the build of said mesmer, its certainly gotten more fun.

2) Prismatic understanding (which leads nicely onto…)

3) No i don’t think it needs adjusting but im pretty certain it will be judging by reactions. The new traits were supposed to be meaningful decisions to compensate for less choice. I dont think a grandmaster trait paired with an elite utility that grants 10s of stealth is too much. the rest of our stealth skills (unless you build all out for stealth) are on long cooldowns. (personally i use decoy and mass invis only … less stealth and id drop the chaos line completley now that Chaotic Dampening is useless in my opinion)

4) Yes it plays much nicer than it used to, having access to all the interrupt traits make it feel so much better

5) Yes Chaos so far ive not played around with inspiration

6) I absolutely loved conditional recharges when the patch first hit. I’ve never had as much fun on my mesmer as patch day, everything felt so fluid and right…then came the nerf to the % recharge and now? No it absolutely sucks. Having to use skills i might not want to, or leap through my chaos field just to get the same and less of a cooldown compared to prepatch is ridiculous. I thought the new traits were supposed to be meaningful not weaker than prepatch. if all traits are ‘balanced’ the same as this one then the whole trait system will be unexciting. What really irks me is that 3 of the elementalist cooldown traits have been boosted to 33%! and combined with extra goodies like 10% damage or 190 precision and best of all, Ele’s dont have to do a thing to get the cooldown/bonuses except spend a trait point..no blasting fire fields or standing on their heads in waterfields…and did i mention 33% cooldown? on all the skills in the attunement? Firey breath fire skill 3 seconds of 4 burns stacks every…3 seconds?? nice synergy as the kids say nowadays. Im no matematition but 2% conditional recharge over 5 seconds equates to 10%? that means it shaves a whole 3.5 seconds of chaos armor? So the master trait makes Chaos armor 31.5 secs instead of 35? Can i have a flat 33% instead please? (ok rant over)

7) yes so far im absolutely loving the new mimic skill…best incarnation of mimic yet GJ devs.

8) not used timewarp much yet so can’t comment

9) lost a lot to condi mesmers on patch day…should have brought some condi clears ..doh.

Perhaps we could get something like the ele traits that grant a flat -33% cooldown reduction +10% dmg or +190 precision to 5 skills
instead of ‘somewhere between 10-20% reduction to 3 of your skills if you do a bunch of stuff’

“For staff cd trait – conditional recharge is something new we’re trying out. The high cd reduction uptime that we were seeing right out of the gate wasn’t something we felt comfortable with. If it feels really weak after this we’ll come back to it and look at it again.”
Josh Davis

So we’ve had some time to play test this and does it indeed feel too weak?

Personally i think it feels much too weak now and would use a different trait if any other suited my build. (not a fan of long cool down passive traits and don’t need condition damage)
I like the idea of the conditional recharge and it was indeed a fun mechanic but at the moment its sub-par to the old chaotic dampening trait – flat 20% reduction.

I’d like to see the trait at possibly 4% or at 3% with an added cool down reduction to staff 4 / Trident 3 Chaos armor (20% – 28 seconds) built into the trait.

This second option could combat the problem of balancing the skill for the people that only use staff vs those using both staff and glamour utilities to leap through.

If you only balance the trait around staff it makes it too good for those using glamour utilities to leap through and balancing around staff + glamour utilities makes it too weak for just staff users.

Josh Davis.6015:

Wanted to clear something up:

Power Block had its damage unintentionally increased with the 6/23 release. The reduction wasn’t a “nerf” – it was a bug fix. It still does the same damage it did before the 6/23 release.

As for Maimed, we wanted to address it before the build went out but we ran out of time. I agree that it would have been better to have adjusted it before you guys got your hands on the new build, but there just wasn’t time. Sorry about this.

For staff cd trait – conditional recharge is something new we’re trying out. The high cd reduction uptime that we were seeing right out of the gate wasn’t something we felt comfortable with. If it feels really weak after this we’ll come back to it and look at it again.

Anyways, as Peters said, we’re keeping a really close eye on everything right now and things will definitely continue to shift as we discover and evaluate how things take shape across the game.

Hope that addresses a few of your questions.

Night!

The new traits are supposed to be more powerful since we get less choice? I think the new method of conditional recharge was an excellent idea that worked great and was a lot of fun, but nerfing it to only recharging cool downs to what they were with the old chaotic dampening trait (20 percent just for having the trait equipped vs 20 percent for having to phase retreat and use your chaos armor….give me the old chaotic dampening anytime)

was the problem being able to get perma chaos armor via other glamor utilities? Didn’t have time to test this before the changes so idk but if so then perhaps a fix could be keep the conditional recharge lower but make staff 4 chaos armor recharge more often (Lower base cool down) this way you could recharge the skills more often but extra armor from glamor utilities would be less effective than before.

these traits need to be powerful since now we only get 3 choices per line.
Keep watering them down and the whole system will feel weak and insipid.
Unless you carry glamour utilities, the changes feel pretty harsh.

Problem for me is that there is no character slot included in the standard edition when one of the biggest draws of the expansion is a new class ( = new character)

Its a bit like buying a stereo only to find that it doesn’t come with speakers and you have to buy them seperatley.

Should have been something like this

Standard = includes one character slot
Deluxe = includes three character slots + 2000 gems
Ultimate = 5 character slots (basically what we got in the original game) + 4000 gems

I don’t think that’s going overboard for forking out $100

Kury.8210:

Thief specialization name: Dragonshooter. Gotta stick to the set precedent.

My bet is new spec will be called
Poacher.
Fits rifles and thief current skills/ name

Thought id share my Celestial Bunker build, I know lots of people think Celestial doesn’t work on a guardian but I’ve had a lot of success with this build.

It’s very similar to the standard shout / healing guard but it actually does damage and heals just as much. You have 20k hit points, 1k healing power with mace and almost 3000 armor. On top of that 199% ferocity and 40% crit chance gives you some decent hits. 488 Condition damage is a nice addition to Virtue of Justice (which Blinds on use as per the standard bunker build)

My build makes use of some traits that the standard healing amulet Shout guard doesn’t – Mostly Vigorous Precision which grants 5 1/2 seconds of vigor on a critical hit which = more Selfless Daring.
I also use Empowering Might to grant might to myself and allies on crits which has synergy with Altruistic healing, healing a 240 area every time i crit (about the size of a point)

Sigils i use accuracy, which alongside Retributive armor (converts 7% toughness into prec) boosts the crit chance to 40% (more crits = more might to allies = more healing)

Energy Sigil for selfless daring (which alongside vigor on crits allows for a lot of dodge heals)

Hope you Enjoy or at least try it out before criticism

Jesia

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAW5dlsApVo1CxUI8DRBDBljNYnhkPirjwBCAA-TJBBwAAeCAV3fYzFBAcZAA

A shortened version of Farens rapier as a dagger. I can’t find a nice dagger skin to math this sword. (Thin they’re called main gauche)

Called mine Elsha

The main problem at the moment is that there’s little reason to not run with the ‘zerg’ when your on a winning server at off peak times.
You need to add more tactical elements into the game mode by allowing small forces to make a huge difference and combat expansion in other ways apart from hopelessly defending a keep against overwhelming odds (which is totally demoralizing)
(However, i don’t think penalizing a winning side by them earning less points is fair in any way what so ever)

So my idea is to change the way supply camps works in wvw.
Lets say for example that your side is green. If you take a keep in the red area, your supply camps (in the green area) have to provide supply to those keeps too. If you take a red supply camp then you ‘disable’ it (as opposed to take control of it)

You can upgrade your own supply camps to increase the number of Dolyak caravans but with each keep you take further and further away then supply becomes more difficult/time consuming to deliver.

This would only work if you also change the way supply works in keeps. If the supply reaches 0 then the keep starts to crumble, eventually becoming a ruin and free for taking (this only happens if the keep isn’t in your color zone so an out numbered red sides keep with 0 supply will function as it does now and never decays)
So instead of the night team all zerging, you would have to split your forces to escort dolyaks/ ensure a steady supply chain/ make more strategic decisions. The more you expand, the thinner you have to spread your forces.

An out manned team could then make a huge difference by essentially cutting off supply/ starving the night team out.
It would alleviate the problem of a night team capping everything and then sitting on a 500+ ppt, requiring constant work to maintain the towers you’ve taken by providing enough supply for them to operate. It would give night teams something to do after they have capped an entire map and if the keeps were left without supply then the night team would only ever own their 1/3, thus minimizing the amount of points they would be able to achieve over an night time period.

So to recap.

Supply is only ever transported from your own supply camps

Enemy supply camps can be ‘disabled’ but not taken

Captured enemy keeps consume supply and decay if no supply is available. (they could become grey/neutral/open until taken again)

Supply camps can be upgraded to increase the number of caravans/ amount of supply delivered (which makes keeping a fully upgraded camp essential and an attractive target for a small group)

It’s more like how real conquest would have happened. ensuring supply chains to expand your territory.

Having Mirror give 2 secs of distortion rather than reflection (could be traited to reflect by masterful reflection) Would make it SOMEWHAT useful

Most agree that the thief profession is in a rather bad place at the moment so i thought we could suggest some none OP changes that might help since we’re the players that use the class day in day out.
Below is my contribution but feel free to add your own just make sure they aren’t overpowered or unrealistic.

1) Make Flanking Strike unblock-able – if you require a hit with flanking strike to unlock the unblock-able attack Larcenous Strike then make flanking strike unblock-able too. This would still negate precasting it to unlock larcenous strike but solve the silly situation where we have an unblock-able attack hidden behind a blockable one.
OR
Revert Larcenous strike to removing 2 boons since its much more difficult to land

2) Make stealing grant stealth without the Hidden Thief trait and change Hidden thief to ‘Going into stealth blocks projectiles’

3) Trick shot and cluster bomb revert to 1200m range

4) Add a torment or confusion pulse to Choking gas along with poison.

5) Revealed debuff reduces damage taken by 25%

Rym.1469:

If you want to run build like this, Power Necro 2-shots you, D/p thief doesn’t give a flying kitten and much more.

Seriously guys, stop posting how LB Ranger does damage when you build for straight no survivability and pop every long cooldown you have for one spike.

Power necros don’t 2 shot you…you have 20k health with guard stacks, 3 seconds of stealth every 9 seconds (thats 33% of the time i can be hidden) a 1200m knockback, an aoe cripple and did you miss the part i said i played this setup all night? i know exactley what it does.
On Pikken square wvw last night there were 4 rangers running in a group and you couldn’t even get close to them. Im guessing they were calling targets and insta gib, no matter what class.
If you seriously dont think that all the kiddies will flock to ranger now ‘I SNIEP UR kitten’
then by all means continue to defend it.
I watched some youtube vids posted here a few weeks ago by a nicely skilled Ranger killing warriors. It made me smile because a lot of easy moders flocked to warrior after their buffs and Warriors were widely considered OP (and ranger u/p)
Ask yourself would you watch a video of a LB ranger now roaming in WvW?
well no because anyone can do it effectively.

You’re deluding yourselves.
1500m, high velocity, tracking, 8 sec recharge skill that does THAT much dmg that fast is a cancer to the profession and game modes.

I have 2 lvl 80 Rangers which i’ve always loved playing, but last night running around wvw was a complete joke. I specc’ed full berzerker 6/6/xxx just to see the changes at thier full potential and it was the least fun i’ve ever had playing my ranger, Fights didn’t feel hard won at all and very very cheesey.
But unfortunately for every player like myself that likes to feel like they’ve earned a wvw kill, there will be 1000 players who just want the ‘i win’ button.

Please think before you defend or justify these changes.
Do you want Rangers to become the fotm cheesemode scrub class? because thats exactley the rep they will now get.
Have some pride in your Ranger and in your own skills because being OP gets very old very fast.

I’m guessing the reason it’s an outfit and not separate armour pieces is because it would clip badly with existing sets. Outfits are a nice alternative way that the designers can be creative and not have to worry each time about clipping issues.
Also with an outfit rather than armour set your Appealing to every armour weight user rather than say only medium.

a t s e.9614:

So many mesmers defending PU. This is also sad, I play thief/engi/warr and I don’t defend fail builds like hambow, pistol whip and decap.

Just glancing at your post history this is really rich coming from someone defending strength runes, which are all pretty much every single build in the ToL used.
Also id like to post this quiote:

‘I don’t use Balthazar runes , I think they are fine. I just don’t like this logic of " Nerf what is good" instead of buffing what is bad.’

yus is from the OP about str runes.

I use a build on my condi mesmer that plays in a similar way but has lots of options for damage and is cheap as chips to set up. (i originally wanted Torment runes but they’re far too expensive) I tried to stay away from a PU build and make use of the new traits.
It achieves 2 sec burning in a bit different way (Smouldering sigils) but has lots of torment applications.
Lets call it the Tormentalist

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fhAQNAW7fl0npRtFpxMNcrNitBZyLUCUPkjsySGghB-T1hAABws/QYK/AV9nNuIADqbAgnAAbKBJFAMrBA-w

Re: your build Osi, you could also drop the 2 points from Inspiration and take cleansing Conflagration for a little less condi removal but more invis/buffs and then you’d be able to drop the toxic focusing crystal for a regular once since you’d have another 10% duration from the Domination line.

Also finding it hard to think of reasons to log in after the feature patch.

I foolishly let myself get excited that perhaps just a few of my mesmers old, annoying broken traits and skills would be fixed with the patch only to discover that most still don’t work or are broken in other ways. Not only that but out of the five new traits only one was anything like good and that was ‘fixed’ in record breaking time to be as bad as the rest.

So it’s disheartening to say the least and lately i think, not really worth wasting my time/money on.

[@ Anet] – Where do you want the mesmer?

My guess is the recycle bin

there are plenty of places to pvp underwater in WvW which i frequently do so its not a none issue thanks

still doesnt work 1 month on,…ill check back and update this post each month

Renny.6571:

You can’t get an interrupt through stability anyway.. I agree with all of these except the auto attack thing. It just completely annihilates many high skillcap builds.

Power Block: Fixed an issue that caused this trait to set skills with zero recharge on 10 second recharge; namely auto-attacks from creatures and players, as well as thief initiative abilities. This trait will no longer trigger through stun immunity effects such as Stability and Defiance.

The last line should have been enough of a fix