Guild Wars 2

I’ve been trying to make one of these. Jalis/Glint or Jalis/Mallyx with soldiers stats. For traits I’d take retribution, invocation or salvation, herald/corruption depending on what your using. For weapons: staff, sword/(shield or sword)

My problem with it is that not only is it a balance issue, is that it’s just so unbelievably boring in every aspect. It’s boring to fight, it’s boring to be and it’s boring to watch. I can’t go to my friends and say “did you see the match between spookie and pz? They bunkered down so hard, it was a stalemate for the whole 15min, it was intense.”

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Hooglese.4860:

That is incredibly stupid.

Well it’s one aspect of many that are incredibly stupid about this system. The most annoying is the unbalance of Elite Specs to non… Players still determined to run their old pre-HoT meta pvp build thinking it’s great and matchmaking for solo queue players not taking into account Elite Spec meta when forming team comp.

It’s just bad design all around.

Bad balance is something most pvp games suffering from and has to be tested. This is just spectacular though, some one had to have said “if they have a leaver the enemy team deserves to be punished” and then the rest of the staff had to say “yeah that’s fair, even if they play well and win despite being at a disadvantage, they should still get screwed over.” If someone dc’s right now at any time they may as well just end the game and give the enemy point a pip because there is literally no reason not to.

That is incredibly stupid.

If a teammate dc’s due to a server crash, their a kitten, or whatever, you will lose a pip no matter what. Even if you win. Our team had a player dc due to the issue that was patched 30min later and we all lost a point, even after we won the game. Why was this the decision? Is this the case if they’re a pug? There is no logical reason why we should ever lose a pip for winning a match. Sure the dc’d player can lose a pip that’s not so bad, but this isn’t good, not getting a pip would be better. This is a pretty bad design choice and needs to be rectified. I can’t think of a worse implementation than this.

Scrapper is friggen good. While viper revs are more dangerous to chronos, scrapps can eat vipers and do a decent amount of damage to a chronobunk, and are in my opinion tankier. They’re very viable and I don’t know why they’re not in the accepted meta, it’s a high skill cap high reward spec. A scrapper in the right hands wins games. It’s like thief 2.0 with the drone stealth, mobility, ability to stomp, damage and control, and used right can swing team fights.

I mostly want the option to watch them in client so I can control who I watch. I’d also like the option to have spectate work for ranked matches, sorted by rank, like in gw1 or dota/LoL/ect.. . I don’t care about spectating hotjoin matches, in fact that’s the thing I’d want to watch the least of. This would probably be hard so I don’t imagine it being implemented soon, but I’d like it implemented

This is also a very good point and would be quite easy to do.

Shepherd.5839:

Well its been awhile but another thing that comes to mind is most esports games (such as LoL and Smite) have seperate youtube channels for their esports scene and they list each match by itself on there, so you can right away start watching, say, Abjured vs Team PZ game 2 rather than having to fast forward through videos trying to find the spot you want.

Even if you just post them to the regular youtube channel would be fine, but it would definitely be better if you could find each match individually later rather than simply scrolling through the whole stream feed trying to find it.

Could you even imagine minstrel chrono bunkers?! It would be worse

Bunker mes is the most boring thing I’ve seen. I main mesmer in pvp practically, I have almost a thousand mesmer matches. Bunker mes drives me nuts because I see them make so many mistakes, like rookie ones. Such as they use distortion when no one’s targetting them, using continuum split and auto attacking, healing when they have full hp, and so on, but they don’t get punished. All they do is keep the defense up and bore me to death. Also, played against 2 in a party, we won with 500-200ish and it took 12min. 12 friggen minutes of slowly but surely winning. It wasn’t fun. I’ve also had a lot of fun using portal against them cause there is nothing they can do to keep up with me other then learn, but considering how easy it is they won’t. I also have yet to die to one. I never see 2 bunk mes and think “crap we lose” but instead “this is going to take a while.” In the pro leagues I saw monday, it was boring. Really boring. The abjured match was alright but only because the matches weren’t slower than a quadriplegic turtle, which was mostly due to the abjured losing the second match. A single bunker isn’t the issue (which is why eu is still fun to watch), however it’s the teamfight’s they excel in since they share their defensive abilities. This is an oversight. I don’t mind having chronos having support, it’s great, but aoe invuln for 3s every 30s? That’s 10% invuln for the team, from one skill. They also have the aoe distortion help, the gravity well, well of eternity and chaos field. Adding another on top of this pretty much makes any fight with both of them in it a stalemate, and that’s a snooze fest.

What I miss in pvp is pretty much entirely what mesmer changed out of. I miss portals making clutch moves, changing the shape of the map. I will never forget TCG portalling in, to kill the lord while there’s only 5 more seconds in the match, taking the win. Sure bunker mes could take portal, but they won’t have the burst. It’s (or was rather) fun to watch a mesmer and a thief come out of stealth and nuke an unsuspecting player to 0hp. Now that’s unlikely to happen even with a shatter mes and thief pouncing on a player cause they’re just too tanky.

We can, right now, try to find a counter to this, because anet isn’t going to nerf anything. Well of precognition is a pain, since it doesn’t prevent point capture contribution and has a pseudo 30s cooldown. I find there isn’t much condition removal outside of their heal skill and allies, so a reaper/condi rev should be able to hurt them and a scrapper in the right hands could take them down. Having a high mobility team can also help, provided you move faster and can out dps the rest of the teams sustain. This team comp is pretty much just eu’s or the abjured’s, and honestly it’s still at a disadvantage due to the whole chrono +chrono = immortality.

Maybe a dev will fix this by, idk making well of precog prevent point cap, or by making it a block or by changing it back to giving allies unblockability. I doubt it, but this is an issue because it’s making pvp boring. As much as pure trap dragon hunters make me angry i’d preffer a team of pure glass cannon’s nuking each other; see last week’s highlight of “get your shovel’s out boys” for an example.

darres.8203:

welp…i dont know what to say

I really think this picture defines how leagues are right now. I don’t mind losing tiers with that but if you’re up against all of them and they’re all partied up and then you’re all pugs, that’s just unfair. I’m sorry about that.

Queuing solo is a nightmare. It’s not fun. Taking even one more person makes it a lot more fun. Getting 3-5 is ideal, but going in alone is terrible, no one is having fun and everyone’s just yelling at each other. A solo queue option would be really nice for leagues.

Why wasn’t it needed before? Easy, win or lose it didn’t matter, there was no punishment for loss but now there is. Now that this exists, however, this makes a lot of people get angrier when they are losing, or when they think they’ll lose. Don’t get me wrong, that existed before, but now it’s a nightmare. When I party up, which I almost always do now, it’s rarely 5 pug vs 5 pug matches, usually it’s against at least one 3 person team. I don’t mind there being a favour to team work, which should exist, but there are going to be a lot of people that don’t have a party cause they’re just doing a game or two, need a solo queue.

It’s not going to fix a lot, salt won’t go away, but at least it will cut down on it and not make being in a team against 5 pugs feel like a free win. This is the other side of it. Teaming up doesn’t necessarily require coordination and rarely do I find my team losing. I’ve done some stupid things when I play with a team, like tonight I spectral walked back through a test of faith, which was stupid and it should’ve hindered my team, but the enemy team was chasing a downed ele in mist form off the point he was defending and never captured it so we won. That’s just bad play, and these guys were emerald/sapphire, but I can’t blame them too much because none of them were partied up and one ended up rage quitting. I just feel bad for them, and I’m not having the crazy fun I could be having if at least some of them were in a team. Things might be different in EU but I can’t imagine there would be a lot of backlash against this.

Jekkt.6045:

Everytime you think the meta can’t get worse, you’re in for a surprise.

that says it all.

Yeah. I liked the elite specs and rev before release then it comes out and HOLY FLUFFY KITTEN they upped dragonhunter damage when it should’ve been lowered a little after BWE3 and upped the survive + gave a cc. Bunker chronos always have point contribution and perma quickness. The new pets do like 2x the dmg of other pets. The removal of the self corruption on Mallyx means its a resistance bot that isnt hurt by boon removal. Tempests never die unless they run maurader. Scrappers I have less of an issue with although stealth gyro could have a longer cooldown. Daredevil has no logic to the numbers, cause vault does more damage then backstab and is aoe + evades, not to mention the other evading skill evades less with barely any cost, not that they’ll be used that often because dragonhunter + trapper rune = stealth assassin that can out dps a thief at an aoe level.

I can’t wait for the balance update, but have no fear that’ll only happen in January 2016.

I created the Capacitive Bottle twice and it does not appear in my collection. I have everything else for it just not that. Is this happening to anyone else? Is there something I’m doing wrong?

I mostly just want to watch ranked and tournaments in client. Gw1 had this and I have no idea why it’s not in gw2

Can we get a way to get Rym and Roy in the same room? He needs to read these

Well, looks like warrior is going to be gone from pvp for 4 months. As much as I’m annoyed by warriors that’s a kitten move anet. Thieves too.

Is everyone ready for the druid dragonhunter meta (herald too)? I’m anticipating durability runes replacing vamp runes for everyone and there dog using them.

Mefiq.7039:

Dont worry, anet will delete thief so problem solved.

Woah hey if they delete thief who are they going to use to make obselete builds next warriors? Oh wait kitten

I agree. No risk high reward. No one should be on the other side of this IMO. It hits insanely hard (like rapid fire dmg) and costs next to no energy or cool down

Morwath.9817:

Yay, lets nurf Druid more without buffing core Ranger. Do you people realize that if Druid becomes weak, then Ranger itself is in worse state than Warrior/Thief?

I’m not suggesting druid become weak, I’m suggesting reducing it get made not as strong as its overtuned. There doesn’t seem to be one reason not to bring it. Core ranger right now is in a better position than those two since you can always bring a condi build.

This is round 2 for me, with a lot more knowledge of everything. For info I play necro, guard, mesmer, revenant some engie and some ranger. I will indicate what needs issues with a priority index. 1 for high, and game breaking, 2 for needs work , 3 for some work needed. 4 is a technical issue/bug.

Dragon Hunter

• Test of Faith(1). This skill is instant cast and unblockable with a pretty hard hit of 5-12k depending on if it crits or if you pass the barrier, and also grants protection. When traited it is an instant cast daze that is unblockable on a 24s cool down. This pretty much assures revives and cleaves will happen with all of the above. The damage on activation is also rediculous, since I find it barely matter if they hit by going through.
• Fragments of Faith(2) is too strong. It hits pretty hard for a defensive ability.
• Dragon’s Maw (4) . It isn’t animating at all. I was in a full party on TS and no one had it animating.
• True Shot (2). It hits a little too hard right now. Not too hard to be broken but harder then mighty blow, it’s melee equivalent and that’s silly.
• Symbol of Energy (3) is too hard to land on people, teammate or enemy.
• Hunter’s ward (3,4). This skill is kind of a super powerful skill if it lands, excluding the damage. Needs a slight tone down by # of people hit or by cooldown. It also doesn’t always animate.
• Piercing Light(3) It’s too strong as it stands. Reducing daze time would fix that.
• Heavy light(3) is again, too strong. Simply from the activation time + stability duration resulting in being cc proof more than half the time.

Warrior/Berserker

• In general (1-2). I don’t play warrior but it’s fairly obvious that there’s an issue with it. While rampage and shoutbow are still somewhat viable, there are other builds that do the same thing better (ie dragonhunter and druid respectively). There are also no berserker builds since it means no fast hands and that’s way too handy of a trait not to bring.

Revenant/Herald

• down state has slow and a knock back. That’s just too strong.
• Coalesence of Ruin (2) is too strong and costs no energy almost with a 2s cooldown.
• Sword auto attack(3) hits too hard. It just hits harder than any auto I’ve seen, including necro dagger.
• Unrelenting Assault (3 and 4). It hits friggen hard 1v1 but does little in team fights. The bug is that it can just stop casting and potentially lock your character when using a shield.
• Mallyx(3) is just not great.
• Jalis (3) doesn’t have a viable stun break for pvp. 50 energy is too much for that.
• Phase Traversal (3) can leave you dead in the water if it decides it doesn’t want to connect, since it pops the energy at the start of the cast.
• Glint(2) is just the best legend. It cost’s little energy even if played right. Even just blowing all your facets is fine cause the abilites are that strong.
• Corruption (2) is not a viable trait line with the exception of Demonic Defiance.
• Salvation (1) is not a viable trait line
• Ventari (2) the heal per energy and lack of stun break will mean this legend can’t be taken.
  I am open to seeing a ventari revenant for support, I’m not knocking that idea. But it’s just too weak.

Scrapper

• Rocket jump (3) The triple leap, while awesome in theory, is too powerful, especially with the number of lightning fields.
• Function gyro (4) doesn’t seem to work when slowed, so it doesn’t work on revs.
• In general I have few issues.

Theif/Daredevil

• Vault(3) hits for 10-15% too much.
• rest of the skill(3) hit too little.
• Theif in general (1) needs a work with the introduction of reveals and just general lack luster ability. See https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-issues-3 for more indepth analysis.

Druid

• General (2) the idea of the class as a dedicated healer with plenty of condi removal potential is going to put this as a scale tipping class.
• Smokescale (2) are just doing too much damage.
• Bristlebacks (2) also do way too much damage.
• avatar skill 3 (3) does more daze (to potentially perma daze) than no daze. Don’t know how this happened.
• avatar skill 4 (3) is essentailly heal skill 2 for how much it heals.
• Staff skill 3 (3) provides a heal a kite and an evade on a 15s cooldown. It just does too much.
• Ancestral Wisp (?) I don’t see this skill ever being used by allied or enemy druids. There’s a reason for that but I don’t know what that is.
• The root trait (2) when interupt pretty much can be used to perma lock someone, especially when used with the 3rd avatar skill.
• glyphs (3) aren’t useful by the looks of it

Reaper

• Chill damage (3) hits too hard for how easy it is to apply and how cruel it already is.

Chronomancer

• Well of Precoginition (3) should not allow for point contribution.
• Deja vu (3, and yes, the alt) I really like this skill but I can’t deny it provides a lot of sustain + a clone. I’d like to see using this up the cooldown while lowering the cooldown of the base, which would make it require some skill to use rather than being a lower cooldown block skill.
• Continuum rift (4) when is killed doesn’t instantly warp mesmers back always but will occasionally wait its full time.

Tempest

• Overload Air, with air attune (3) means this has kitten cooldown. It can be interupted which can hurt but all in all its a pretty easy access to high damage.
• Warhorn (3) isn’t very useful, or no one has found a build for it. The numbers are fairly low.

Equipment

• there are still plenty of useless trait combos, like Rampage amulet.
• Trapper runes (2) are probably too strong for pvp since they give more stealth than a thief can give itself when cooldowns are low.

This is… Poor design to say the least. If they’re going to make it that way (one per) it would make sense if they were at least named differently to indicate which one you need. It would be best design to just let you chose which you want if they don’t want it working as one for all. It’s kinda annoying since I’ve only seen/heard about them after DS meta succeeds.

I wanted dark harvest but I guess I got 6 more of those kittens to kill. I feel bad for scrappers and tempests. It’s like were being punished for our elite specialisations names.

One of my personal favourites is that if you go down as you activate Vengeful Hammers, they stay up, even in defeated state and will chip away at your enemies heels as your char takes a nap. They despawn when your revived but its still funny to watch hammers spinning around a corpse

I pretty much disagree with everything here, so here’s some feedback on your feedback

Versepelles.1972:

Unrelenting Assault: Reduce damage by 50%. This skill should be an evade and teleport, but the damage is too high.

50% would kill this skill. Keep in mind it does less dmg per target. I remember playing with this at 50% during BWE1 and it was a total waste of energy.

Grasping Shadow: Reduce cast time to 1/4 second (-50%). Sword off-hand can be just as viable as shield if Grasping Shadow is buffed, adding a layer of complexity, skill, and variety.

This needs a range increase. I agree to the reason but I find I can never land it because I need to be at 130 range and I want to use it when I can’t auto attack. It’s also impossible to land if they’re moving with 130 range.

Coalescence of Ruin: Reduce damage by 33%. Just a moderately overtuned skill, like True Shot.

33% is harsh but 10-15% would be acceptable. (putting max dmg around 1700, similar to mighty blow)

Drop the Hammer: Reduce cast time to 1.25s (-29%). This skill is fairly useless in mid to high tier PvP, but could be more interesting with decreased cast time.

We have enough cc as it is, lowering its cast would make it op. All you need to do is aim it.

Misery Swipe (chain): Increase range to somewhere between 300 and 480. This weapon would see much more use in condi builds with some range on the auto attacks.

The auto attack is fine. It’s the 3rd skill that needs some love, as it is just “super auto attack” right now. Although, if this was buffed I wouldn’t complain.

Temporal Rift: Add a chain skill to detonate the rift, like mesmer’s focus 4 (Temporal Curtain). Decrease the range to 600 (-33%). This alone could make axe a viable choice.

I’m okay with this one, as long as the activation doesn’t cost energy.

Mallyx

• Pain Absorption: Transfer 2 conditions from each ally and youself to the target. Increase cast time to 3/4s (+50%). This allows active counterplay to conditions, and gives revenants meaningful condition removal. This change alone makes Mallyx competitive with Shiro.
• Banish Enchantment: Corrupt 2 boons instead of removing them. Increase cast time to 3/4s (+50%). This allows for active counterplay to some boonful classes.

There is so much more wrong with Mallyx than just this. I’d prefer a low cast time on Banish and it just removing them and pain absorbtion definetly needs a rework but that change would make it overly powerful to say the least. Imagine using it when everyone on the team has 3 burn stacks and it hits 5 people. That’s 15 transferred burn, enough to put anyone down to half health.

Versepelles.1972:

Ventari

• Remove from the game. (I kid, but this would need a major overhaul to be viable in PvP, it seems).

Jalis

• See Ventari.

Nope. I’ve seen ventari healers save teams and Jalis is almost viable, it just needs to have a different stun breaker.

Herald

• All facets: Add 1/4s cast time to initial cast. This forces Revenants to think when to activate the signets, rather than spamming them during Unrelenting Assault or Crystal Hibernation. (Leave Infuse Light and Gaze of Darkness chain skills as instant cast!)
• Infuse Light: Make this skill about 5 times more visible (+400%). This is a great active mechanic but is currently not visible enough except in the buff bar.

I really don’t think you get how these work. If they’re not instant activation I would hope they get a sever cut in energy cost. I like to not have them up in UA/CH so I can get more energy back. I do, however, need to pop them instantaneously when I’m on the run or blocking with my staff/off hand sword so I can get in and out of fights and I’m not useless.

Infuse light could have a more visible duration, but imo it’s pretty obvious. More of something you as a player have to learn to counter.

Versepelles.1972:

Devastation

• Malicious Reprisal: Remove the hidden ICD from this trait. This allows active counter to bunker builds which rely on blocking.

It’s 30s on the top right corner. It’s not hidden, all traits that have one work like this.

Corruption

• Opportune Extraction: Reduce ICD to 6s (-40%). Optionally corrupt boon rather than remove. This allows condition-specced revs to be a threat to boonful classes.

Way too strong. This trait is in a good place, any lower and you’re ripping boons like crazy. Making it corrupt just turns this into an auto fear on DHs, which while I would find hilarious, would also be broken.

Invocation

• Roiling Mists: Reduce critical chance while under fury increase from 20% to 10%. This is not vital, but it might be a good place to balance overall Revenant damage.

Honestly, yeah. Right now revs have a 94% crit chance with Maurader amulet since you can keep fury up indefinitely using the Invocation line right.

Herald

• Shared Empowerment: Reduce might duration to 5s baseline (-38%). Currently, this trait alone overpowers Revenant raw damage output. A fair reduction will put Revenant damage in line with other classes.

Unrelated, might buffs condi damage too, more so argueably.
I wouldn’t do this, cause the other two options for the trait kinda blow. While I would like Harmonized Continuity in concept, in practice it just doesn’t. The other two need to do more to be viable rather than nerfing shared empowerment.

I don’t know why you didn’t even comment on the useless trait for pvp, Improved Aggression which does next to nothing in pvp since it doesn’t effect players.

Disclaimer: These two things may seem independent but when one happens they both happen.

For a while now (its gotten worse since HoT) I’ve had load time issues with GW2 exclusively. Occasionally I’ll also have a hard cap of 5-10 fps regardless of settings and with nothing else running. Lately, since release of HoT, I’ve been having issues with certain skills not animating, most notably dragonhunter traps/hunters ward, herald skills + the glowing orb below, but not the active facets that glows and tempest over loads. Wells (chrono or necro) are also an issue sometimes. The load times for me vary on the same map (Heart of the Mists for consistency) from 23s upwards to 15 minutes with no background applications.

This seems to be an issue local to my computer, since I don’t know anyone else with this issue, so info will be below. If anyone has any recommendations or similar issues, feel free to share.

OS Name Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium
Version 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 Build 7601
System Type x64-based PC
Processor AMD A10-5800K APU with Radeon™ HD Graphics, 4300 Mhz, 2 Core(s), 4 Logical Processor(s)
BIOS Version/Date American Megatrends Inc. 6004, 4/2/2013
SMBIOS Version 2.7
Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB

Aside I got 1TB, 273GB free

Basically what Misguided.5139 said.

I reccomend Glint out of combat and feeling it out when in combat by pretty much having Elements on auto cast

I personally prefer Equilibrium since it can hit pretty kitten hard when above 50% and you should aim for switching at 51 if you can.

General herald tip, when ooc try to be using 5 upkeep as it doesnt reduce your energy and with the GM herald trait you can stack which ever boons you want for combat. After you activate.

Cynz.9437:

Hooglese.4860:

Liquicity.3621:

Nemaides.6873:

Hooglese.4860:

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Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t main thief. I’ve never been able to master the finese of perfectly managing my initiative but knowing that I can’t; I admire those who can rock this class even more than any other. As of late, there’s been a fairly significant drop in people on thief, and those who are playing it aren’t contributing as much to their team as they have in the past. “Why is this?” I found myself asking. I, for the most part (there are always exceptions), beat thieves to a pulp in pvp, duels which is a new thing since the change from traits to specialisations. So let’s take a look at some of the reasons I found why thieves got, arguably nerfed.

Thieves didn’t get any traits made baseline during the change. Many of the classes, most notably mesmer, had traits made baseline, giving them an all round buff to the class. Steal was increased in range by 300 and the recharge was reduced but that was it. The change to deadly arts has essentially made it required to take for any thief build. I think mug needs to be made baseline since it increases survive and damage, so there is literally no reason not to have it. Before it required 2 trait points which was fairly minor and many classes had a trait or two that needed one or two trait points but needing the entire line for it so your build options are dropped drastically. Trickery’s minor traits, grandmaster one not with standing, could also be made baseline on the argument that it’s hard to not take for the bonus initiative.

There is no way to remove conditions outside of shadow arts and even then its just damaging ones. First of all, most DPS classes have a way to deal with weakness where thieves don’t. Thieves really need some way to get rid of weakness since its a hard counter and it has been made easy to apply with cleave skills. Secondly, there’s no way to rapidly remove condis. The remove in stealth trait has been reduced to 1condi per 3s and that’s going to do nothing next to nothing for survive. The only skill that really removes condis for thief is shadow step but that won’t help much against, say, a necro or a burn guard. It really weakens thieves to not have a solution for condis, especially when a lot of abilities now don’t require a target to apply them.

There’s little potential for on point fighting. Thieves have always been bad at this but with acrobatics being turned into what is essentially a worse daredevil, there isn’t exactly an option. Sword dagger was annoying but it was on par with d/p or considered worse and its the one that got the nerf. Now there is daredevil which can fight on point but in no where near the same level, as say, a revenant. Also daredevil plays like an offbrand revenant. It has little stealth, about the same to worse dodge potential, equal mobility, and less damage with out any of the survive. You could say rev needs a nerf, which it does, but even if that happens daredevil still won’t get used as much since it lacks survivability.

Lastly, and most notably, is the introduction of reveal. Being able to reveal a thief for 6 or more seconds is more than enough to kill a thief and between engineers and revs, there is a lot of reveal to go around. There was nothing added to the thief to compensate for this, and that hurts them a lot more than anything. It would be like adding a skill that prevented blocking party wide. Better yet imagine if there was a skill that prevented a necro from using death shroud or, don’t, because it exists and its called moa morph (or signet of humility). Now imagine if it could be used on a 40s cool down. That’s basically what thieves have to deal with. Now, I am going to say, I like the addition of reveal but something should have been done to thieves to make up for it, since I can on my herald use glints gaze 2 more times than a theif can use sr.

If only Karl could have this epiphany.

Ya… but they’d have to bother reading it first.. and GL on any reply ever (source: thief forums)

You just have to believe! Then again, I remember the last balance update where they said “be happy thieves we are bringing in buffs” then just upped pistol damage

well considering there are consistently offensive threads about devs here and they stay here for days w/o getting attention untill some worried citizen reports them to mods, you kind of get the idea how much interest is there for any feedback from this forum section~

Grr, kitten ed trolls ruin everything. I don’t blame them if that’s the case, then again people doing that stuff need to get warnings/forum bans.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Hooglese.4860:

I don’t mind it. Being able to toggle it would be cool but I’m pretty okay with all of it. It’s really helpful to see what some one is using without scrolling through everything in their buffbar, especially in pvp

Is it, though? I’m all for giving abilities obvious tells, but what useful information could you possible gain from the ground effect that you would really need? The Facets just give pulsing boons, and almost every profession already tosses out a truckload of boons at all times. Yes, it might be nice to not have to look at someone’s buff far to tell that they probably have Protection, but they could have Protection from any of a number of other sources as well so you’ll have to check their buff bar anyway.

Sorta. If I see all of their facets popped, especially chaos, I try to lay on the cc so I can energy deny them. If I can force them to swap legends that’s even better

So the consensus is: not great for power not great for condi alright at defence? I know Roy’s a good dev and has been good to revenants. I don’t know what happened, he let Mallyx become this husk of what it was and didn’t bother to change the traits that match mallyxs condi sharing. It’s also resulting in the issue that the heavy resistance was needed for corrupting Mallyx skills but with out that it just becomes dangerously defensive and will cause issues if Mallyx gets stronger.

Liquicity.3621:

Nemaides.6873:

Hooglese.4860:

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hide spoiler

Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t main thief. I’ve never been able to master the finese of perfectly managing my initiative but knowing that I can’t; I admire those who can rock this class even more than any other. As of late, there’s been a fairly significant drop in people on thief, and those who are playing it aren’t contributing as much to their team as they have in the past. “Why is this?” I found myself asking. I, for the most part (there are always exceptions), beat thieves to a pulp in pvp, duels which is a new thing since the change from traits to specialisations. So let’s take a look at some of the reasons I found why thieves got, arguably nerfed.

Thieves didn’t get any traits made baseline during the change. Many of the classes, most notably mesmer, had traits made baseline, giving them an all round buff to the class. Steal was increased in range by 300 and the recharge was reduced but that was it. The change to deadly arts has essentially made it required to take for any thief build. I think mug needs to be made baseline since it increases survive and damage, so there is literally no reason not to have it. Before it required 2 trait points which was fairly minor and many classes had a trait or two that needed one or two trait points but needing the entire line for it so your build options are dropped drastically. Trickery’s minor traits, grandmaster one not with standing, could also be made baseline on the argument that it’s hard to not take for the bonus initiative.

There is no way to remove conditions outside of shadow arts and even then its just damaging ones. First of all, most DPS classes have a way to deal with weakness where thieves don’t. Thieves really need some way to get rid of weakness since its a hard counter and it has been made easy to apply with cleave skills. Secondly, there’s no way to rapidly remove condis. The remove in stealth trait has been reduced to 1condi per 3s and that’s going to do nothing next to nothing for survive. The only skill that really removes condis for thief is shadow step but that won’t help much against, say, a necro or a burn guard. It really weakens thieves to not have a solution for condis, especially when a lot of abilities now don’t require a target to apply them.

There’s little potential for on point fighting. Thieves have always been bad at this but with acrobatics being turned into what is essentially a worse daredevil, there isn’t exactly an option. Sword dagger was annoying but it was on par with d/p or considered worse and its the one that got the nerf. Now there is daredevil which can fight on point but in no where near the same level, as say, a revenant. Also daredevil plays like an offbrand revenant. It has little stealth, about the same to worse dodge potential, equal mobility, and less damage with out any of the survive. You could say rev needs a nerf, which it does, but even if that happens daredevil still won’t get used as much since it lacks survivability.

Lastly, and most notably, is the introduction of reveal. Being able to reveal a thief for 6 or more seconds is more than enough to kill a thief and between engineers and revs, there is a lot of reveal to go around. There was nothing added to the thief to compensate for this, and that hurts them a lot more than anything. It would be like adding a skill that prevented blocking party wide. Better yet imagine if there was a skill that prevented a necro from using death shroud or, don’t, because it exists and its called moa morph (or signet of humility). Now imagine if it could be used on a 40s cool down. That’s basically what thieves have to deal with. Now, I am going to say, I like the addition of reveal but something should have been done to thieves to make up for it, since I can on my herald use glints gaze 2 more times than a theif can use sr.

If only Karl could have this epiphany.

Ya… but they’d have to bother reading it first.. and GL on any reply ever (source: thief forums)

You just have to believe! Then again, I remember the last balance update where they said “be happy thieves we are bringing in buffs” then just upped pistol damage

No you’re not wrong to think that way. I think this is an issue. Im not sure if this was brought up or intended but I don’t believe it should work this way, as it works against a thief, especially if you’re running shadow arts and trickery.

@EasyPanda I agree that DD requires a different playstyle and I don’t have an issue with it as much. It allows thieves to play without stealth but stealth is such an integral part of thieves, daredevil included. Both have an advantage of using it, thief obviously more so, but if neither can use it effectively anymore it becomes an issue.

@TehHobNob I agree and have been using the same build when I do try thief on the rare day and it is adequate condi maintanance especially used with daredevil. That being said its even more of a pigeonhole for said role then warrior’s Cleansing Ire and Fast Hands.

Shogun.7401:

Omg!! Even a non thief player realized the issues. Don’t know what happened to our dev

Yeah, its that bad. I’m a rev, fighting for Mallyx but I can clearly see thief is underpowered. I miss going “kitten A THIEF IS ON MY kitten ” last time that happened it was toker

Let’s get this out of the way: I don’t main thief. I’ve never been able to master the finese of perfectly managing my initiative but knowing that I can’t; I admire those who can rock this class even more than any other. As of late, there’s been a fairly significant drop in people on thief, and those who are playing it aren’t contributing as much to their team as they have in the past. “Why is this?” I found myself asking. I, for the most part (there are always exceptions), beat thieves to a pulp in pvp, duels which is a new thing since the change from traits to specialisations. So let’s take a look at some of the reasons I found why thieves got, arguably nerfed.

Thieves didn’t get any traits made baseline during the change. Many of the classes, most notably mesmer, had traits made baseline, giving them an all round buff to the class. Steal was increased in range by 300 and the recharge was reduced but that was it. The change to deadly arts has essentially made it required to take for any thief build. I think mug needs to be made baseline since it increases survive and damage, so there is literally no reason not to have it. Before it required 2 trait points which was fairly minor and many classes had a trait or two that needed one or two trait points but needing the entire line for it so your build options are dropped drastically. Trickery’s minor traits, grandmaster one not with standing, could also be made baseline on the argument that it’s hard to not take for the bonus initiative.

There is no way to remove conditions outside of shadow arts and even then its just damaging ones. First of all, most DPS classes have a way to deal with weakness where thieves don’t. Thieves really need some way to get rid of weakness since its a hard counter and it has been made easy to apply with cleave skills. Secondly, there’s no way to rapidly remove condis. The remove in stealth trait has been reduced to 1condi per 3s and that’s going to do nothing next to nothing for survive. The only skill that really removes condis for thief is shadow step but that won’t help much against, say, a necro or a burn guard. It really weakens thieves to not have a solution for condis, especially when a lot of abilities now don’t require a target to apply them.

There’s little potential for on point fighting. Thieves have always been bad at this but with acrobatics being turned into what is essentially a worse daredevil, there isn’t exactly an option. Sword dagger was annoying but it was on par with d/p or considered worse and its the one that got the nerf. Now there is daredevil which can fight on point but in no where near the same level, as say, a revenant. Also daredevil plays like an offbrand revenant. It has little stealth, about the same to worse dodge potential, equal mobility, and less damage with out any of the survive. You could say rev needs a nerf, which it does, but even if that happens daredevil still won’t get used as much since it lacks survivability.

Lastly, and most notably, is the introduction of reveal. Being able to reveal a thief for 6 or more seconds is more than enough to kill a thief and between engineers and revs, there is a lot of reveal to go around. There was nothing added to the thief to compensate for this, and that hurts them a lot more than anything. It would be like adding a skill that prevented blocking party wide. Better yet imagine if there was a skill that prevented a necro from using death shroud or, don’t, because it exists and its called moa morph (or signet of humility). Now imagine if it could be used on a 40s cool down. That’s basically what thieves have to deal with. Now, I am going to say, I like the addition of reveal but something should have been done to thieves to make up for it, since I can on my herald use glints gaze 2 more times than a theif can use sr.

It’s a huge over site IMO. If it costed 2-300g or even 400g I’d be okay with it since that’s the price of each other quarter of a legendary but as of now it’s more expensive than buying a precourser flat out. A thing so expensive, that the system was in need of invention. Now it’s an alternative way to sink 800+ gold rather than the legendary quest we were told it was to be.

The tp may regulate it back down but I doubt that will happen soon any time remotely soon. Looking at zaps achieve track, it would be oodles of fun to do and would be pretty challenging to do. I can’t do it however, cause it costs more to do the challenge for the reward.

I could say the journey is more important than the destination, but the destination is why I would do the journey if it is the least efficient path?

I heard the devs are looking into a patch that deletes it but there isn’t a lot of headway. I think a TDM button could reduce it but not remove entirely.

If you have champion brawler too that’s a hell of an achievement and you deserve a finisher or hell, a legendary of your choice on behalf of anet

I don’t mind it. Being able to toggle it would be cool but I’m pretty okay with all of it. It’s really helpful to see what some one is using without scrolling through everything in their buffbar, especially in pvp

I’m playing this build cause its a lot of fun but I’m getting a little sick of the hate towards me because people don’t know how to fight against it.

In a team fight
Target the rev. They are squishy. There’s about 10-15s of block moves and then they’re vulnerable. They also do less damage per target in radius with Unrelenting Assault (UA) by about half. Soothing Bastion will kitten you off, I’d argue that needs a icd of more than 30s. Also conditions and unblockable skills should be used since there isn’t aa single thing they can do about it. Also revs aren’t very good at stomping or reviving so if they’re forced to revive or stomp they’ll pop impossible odds and will be extremely vulnerable since they’ll be out of energy and therefor stunbreaks.

In 1v1s
Most revs I see, as in almost everyone, will pop UA and Glint moves at the start. Block or dodge into a wall or behind where they started to survive this. Stealth won’t save you with the whole reveal thing. Use one autoattsck after. Then its either a block move or an auto attack. Just burst them at this point till they pop the Glint heal. Wait 3s then put them down. Revs are pretty strong at 1v1 scenarios so be careful.

In general/ tldr
Condis. Revs have no condi removal. Trap rangers are a hard counter to a rev with the pet taking half the damage and unblockable condi dealing traps. There’s not much revs can do for that.

Just a quick list of builds that are still totally viable in pvp and can beat their elite spec equivalent:
Cele necro
Any warrior build > berserker build
Condi mesmer
Cele ele (maybe)
Bunker and burn guard (when DH gets a nerf)
D/P thief

Ranger and engineer seem to favour their elite specs/HoT content (pets). I don’t play them but I’d agree that their HoT content only helps and is superior to the core content in every way.

(If you want to beat a rev without HoT just run a condi build, there are plenty)

It does and i think that it shouldn’t go through shocking aura. It feels weird when you use it on shocking aura and don’t get stunned. That being said, an odity is that if you use facet of elements activation and then use unrelenting assualt, if the elemental burst hits, it might stun you, but not always. It seems like a technical issue with that in mind.

Power mallyx works better than condi mallyx, since all condi applying abilities come with a damage boost of some sort. I feel like that alone is a sign Mallyx needs a rework.

It’s definitely spvp. >.> oh well I guess to each there own. It just confuses me

I have no problem with true shot. Traps yes, lb no. It’s just something new and change bad change scary keep game the same and boring

Dondagora.9645:

How many mantras? If it’s Mantra of Distraction then it’s just Lockdown.

It’s usually the heal, distraction and pain.

I’d like duo cause I don’t like to queue alone but I usually only queue with one other person. At the very least I’d like solo though since getting 5 people organised for a team is about as challenging as running on a lubbed treadmill when you’re drunk, but also like that, fun when it works.

I’m seeing most chronomancers in pvp running a chrono mantra build and I can’t figure out why. Chrono doesnt recharge mantras and they’re not effected by alacrity too much so why am I seeing so many? What am I missing? Is it not needing de for clones? But then the survive or damage goes down since you can only then bring inspiration or domination but not both since dueling is being taken? Can some one please enlighten me?

Salamander.2504:

Hooglese.4860:

I have yet to see a good tempest but I’m not ruling it out. I’d like to see a good tempest.

Oh they are out there all right…

Why must I be forced in unranked I wanna fight em. I feel like half the people are new to the game, it makes finding balance issues challenging.

Daharahj.1325:

Staff is the second best weapon availiable to Rev, despite the #4 bug.

Scrappers are not in a good place, they need to be toned down.

Druids have very good group support, in fact they’re rewarded for it with improved AF regen, which leads to more group support.

Tempest isn’t bad, it just isn’t as braindead as cele d/d ele was.

[/quote]

For the staff the damage is lower and the energy costs are higher with out providing much more defence. It by all means should be the best or second best but feels lacklustre.

What issues do you specifically have with scrapper?

I though the last two points were valid and raised that question. Most druids I’ve seen focus on self survive and don’t help teammates out which is annoying. I have yet to see a good tempest but I’m not ruling it out. I’d like to see a good tempest.

HoT inevitably brought in some more issues to balance but didn’t fix some pre-existing ones and should be addressed. I’m trying to be unbiased and avoid “I don’t know how to fight it so it should be nerfed” arguments.

Dragonhunter
Traps are too strong in their current state. Being able to tear off half to all health with a couple traps is insanely strong.
Dragons Maw requires special mention. It feels broken. It’s the only cc I’ve seen that, in pve, actually control an enemy with a break bar not just break it. There is no way out of it.

Berserker
It needs some love. Right now in a match getting to full adrenaline and going into berserk mode is seemingly challenging and when you get into it, it doesn’t seem worth the cost. Seems like a number issue. I don’t play warrior but I can see this is an issue.

Revenant
Herald seems required right now. Mallyx/Condi isn’t good. Crystal hibernation and soothing bastion seem like a free 4s invulnerability with the heal and shouldn’t have point contribution with that. Staff is buggy and weaker than the other weapons. There are also a few useless for pvp traits like the taunt duration trait.

Scrapper
I think scrappers in a good place. Gyros dont seem to be affected by swiftness which makes it keeping up hard and walking with one clunky. Rocket jump does a little too good of damage for what it can do but by like 5-10% tops.

Druid
Right now the traits allow a druid to have a ridiculous amount of survive. It’s better than a bunker guardian, however their outgoing support isn’t that great but that could just be that I mostly only see them self sustaining rather than helping which is a player issue.
I also rarely ever see glyphs. Is there an issue with them? I honestly don’t know but it is notable.

Thief and Daredevil
With the introduction to reveals thief has taken a serious hit. It undeniably needs some buffs to cope with the change. I see most thieves as just food at this point. It feels like most of the issue is that the outgoing damage is less than incoming. Daredevil helps but doesn’t solve the core issue. I also think daredevil is in s good place given thief gets a buff.

Reaper
I don’t see an issue with Reaper. Gravedigger is awfully strong but hard to land.

Tempest
It doesn’t seem like tempest is in a great place. This could be that I haven’t seen enough that have known how to do it but I’ve never felt threatened by one. Rebound needs a buff.

Mesmers and Chronomancer
Blinding dissipation is still causing issues especially when mixed with chrono.
Well of Precognition shouldn’t allow for point contribution since it is an invulnerability. If a player uses it and causes a team decap you should just call them out on it. Same rules as shadow refuge.
Continuum rift is hard to kill in a 1v1 scenario.
Over all its in a pretty good place outside the above.

For background I play mesmer, necro, guardian and now revenant.