Guild Wars 2

AFK detection yes! Shouldn’t be too hard to implement. It could be worked into the idle timer that is always active, and a reduced timeout value if you’re in a PVP match. Being kicked from the match would be the same as deserting, where 3 = ban.

On top of all that, warrior has banners, the highest armour, the highest base health, the highest damaging attacks. The highest build diversity since they have everything, and such easy and friendly laid out traits that it requires no thought, and you can get defense/heals with high sustained damage or burst and also support the group with banners and fury/might.

It’s ok to be better at some things, but only if it’s worse at other things. With each nerf, the similarity in the warrior is left alone. I’ve not played since the start, so I can’t say for sure but it looks like warrior’s weren’t unbalanced, they’ve just become that way after significant bias when the nerf bat comes around. Usually I’m against nerfing and say buff the other classes instead, but in this case warrior really needs a nerf that stops them from getting so much so easily, and in one build. And nerf the passive heals of course.

P.S. Of my elementalist, thief, necromancer, mesmer and warrior, I play the thief, warrior and elementalist the most. I don’t mean to exclude any classes in the comparison, but I don’t know enough about all the classes to include them.

Since the last patch aimed to reduce some of the necro’s conditions, does this mean ANet is looking to grant necros some improved direct damage in future?

I’d like to see a damage buff for thieves. The only reason thieves are seen with high burst is because the only way they can be viable is by going mostly offense, and relying on stealth to escape while they heal – a wear them down style of play. The damage thieves deal is actually lower than a warrior, elementalist, condition engis, sometimes even mesmers, and recently heartseeker which everyone complains about because it can be spammed was compared strength-wise to death shroud auto attack.
For example, my warrior doesn’t need to go berserker to be effective, because it can trait for significant bonuses. All I need to do is hit Mace F1, 3 sec stun, cure 3 conditions, switch to GS and use 100b with 27% base crit chance + fury + 50% crit chance to disabled foes… close to 100% crit chance with the arguably strongest attack in the game, while allowing me to still get high armour and passive heals. And of course it cleaves.

Which brings me to my next point: the state of warriors.

Elementalist: Used to be able to maintain permanent boons for themselves and allies. Nerfed. Warriors can maintain permanent regeneration, might, fury within an AoE.

Thieves: Acrobatic/agile class. Can’t maintain permanent swiftness. Warrior has signet of rage and 30s swiftness on crit (100% chance to trigger). Combine the two and you have permanent swiftness in and out of combat.

Necromancers: Condition class. Doesn’t have access to confusion or reliably burning. Warrior has access to: confusion, burning, bleeding, blind, torment, immobilise, fear, vulnerability, weakness; high enough damage for permanent stuns to not need to worry about nerfing opponent’s heal via poison.

Necromancers: Any direct damage they have is low, and single target. Death shroud auto attack is strong but limited, can be traited to pierce. Warriors on top of having access to more conditions than this condition class, have very high direct damage and almost all of those skills hit up to 3 targets.

Elementalist: Nerfed for mobility due to being able to escape/engage at 1.2k range with RTL. Warriors have greater mobility with GS 5, GS 3, Sword 2. Swiftness (which they have perm) increases the speed and distance of those skills. Chain them together and the only class that has a HOPE of keeping up is thief using steal and shadow shot a few times.

Thief: Mug was nerfed to not crit. Warrior 5 point minor trait damage on dodge is AoE and can crit well over 2k.

Elementalist: Similar to above, evasive arcana damaging dodges do nothing compared to the warrior dodge damage.

Guardian: The tanky healing support class. Elementalist was nerfed to make Guardian superior many months ago. Warrior has 8k higher base health. Warrior has a 25 second stun breaker which can be traited to cool down faster, heal, and grant adrenaline (and cure conditions with runes but those are I suspect rarely used). Warrior has weapons that stun with almost every skill. On top of that, Warrior has superior healing to the Guardian which are passive. Warrior, like Guardian can go invulnerable with Endure Pain twice, once via skill once via trait, and can trait for lower CD. Elementalist and Engineer’s invulnerable skills prevent them from using skills. Warrior’s doesn’t, and can still node cap.

Elementalist: Condition removal nerfed and requires 30 arcane for 1 per 10s, 20 water for 1 per 10s, or 20 water and 30 arcane for 2 per 10s, or 30 in both for 3 per 10s. Warrior requires 20 points in a line that gives toughness, healing power, and a passive heal, for a single trait which cures 3 conditions every 10 seconds when using a skill that deals damage/applies conditions/disables depending on the weapon wielded.

Thief: Assassin class with low damaging attacks by comparison to warrior. The only reason you see thieves hitting higher than warrior more often in PvP is because if thieves were to trait defensive like many warriors can, they’d be completely useless to their team. In fact, a lot of the reason thief can still kill some defensive builds is due to the poison on dagger auto attack – not high damage. In PVE the only reason to take a thief is for shadow refuge. Often, it’s “swap to thief to stealth us” done “now go back to warrior or we’ll replace you with another warrior”.

Elementalist: The jack of all trades. After reading the above, who is the jack of all trades really?

Yeah a power necro using life blast can hit a little less than heart seeker regardless of the opponent’s health. Life blast is slower? Yes, but heart seeker is single target melee range, while life blast is 1.2k range and can be traited to pierce and effortlessly stack might. Necro also has over 40% greater base health.

The class’ mechanic allows for spamming the same skill. If it’s going to get a kill, then it can’t be called bad practice. If they just do it mindlessly (e.g. those thieves that keep spamming even when they have a blind field or are already downed) then you can let them empty their initiative, kill them, and hope they learn to improve. Nerfing it to prevent spammers out of frustration will hurt the rest of us. I’ve used it multiple times in a row when trying to finish off an opponent who is spamming dodge/evade while trying to put distance between us. They of course then insult me for having used it three or four times before finally landing it, despite having just spammed the hell out of their evades (another example of it being bad for a thief to do something but ok for every other class). People spam if it’s an effective option. If it’s not effective and they spam, just facepalm and move on.

Most will disagree I’m sure, but it’s true. People want thief nerfed down till it’s no longer a class in this game.

People cry about something a thief did that other classes can do, that isn’t at over powered. Forget the other class(es); it only matters that it is nerfed for the thief.
We get nerfed.
People cry about something else that they were completely fine with a month ago.
We get nerfed.
People cry about something else that they were completely fine with two months ago.
We get nerfed.
People cry about something else that they were completely fine with three months ago.
We get nerfed.
People cry.. you get the picture.

Bye to shadow step next month I guess, plus a further ‘build diversity’ update that removes all our other stun breakers, following a monthly nerf to our damage, conditions, stealth, boons blah blah blah. Thieves shouldn’t have a healing skill or elite skill because they have deceptive utilities. Thieves should have 1 utility slot not three because one skill can be used twice within a 10 second window. Thieves shouldn’t have an energy pool because they have hard to catch (LOL). Deny it now but it’s bound to be said eventually.

And while you’re at it, buff warrior damage and nerf ours; nerf our evades but let a ranger keep their’s on top of spirits; nerf our stealth but let a mesmer have it on top of clones and phantasms.Thief will be gone from the game and still have people complaining it’s too over powered.

He doesn’t need to explain; there are obvious reasons. This thread is assuming a specific group format though. Stating something is efficient in one or two cases isn’t the same as stating nothing else is efficient in a different group format.

E.g. It’d be suicide to run as glass with 4 tanks. Furthermore of course not everyone has the same level of skill or experience, and would benefit from investing in some survival aspects while they learn how to react to different situations.

It’s ok to dispute, but not to seek it. Else it becomes easy to misinterpret a statement to conflict with your own beliefs when the area they concern is irrelevant to the topic.

On the other hand, if you’re building for speed with a berserker group, you’ll want to invest in offense only, which is likely to be 30/30/15/0/0, 25/30/0/0/15 or 30/30/0/0/10. I always initially assume not, and that there’ll be defensively specced pugs. A glass thief in a defensive pug group never works well for me; although I favour meleeing despite so perhaps if you ranged you could pull it of in those instances as well.

Berserker stats and offensive runes/sigils of course.

The best condition removal is in Shadow Arts, remove 1 condition upon entering stealth and every 3 seconds you’re in stealth. If you’re D/D backstab you’ll also want infusion of shadow also from the Shadow Arts line, giving you 20 Shadow Arts. That gets you 15 in Shadow Arts as well, which is increased stealth duration, useful if you’re stealthing your group past trash.

If you have 20 in Shadow Arts due to being D/D backstab, you might as well go 5 more for might on stealth to make up for going into a defensive line instead of Deadly Arts. 5 more would let you get Shadow’s Rejuvination which will heal you for around 320 upon entering stealth and each second you’re in stealth, which is good sustained healing for a backstab build.

The other healing option is 30 Acrobatics for Assassin’s Reward, but I’d recommend Shadow Arts if you’re a backstab build. Acrobatics does have some condition removal traits but they are automatically applied and have a cooldown, so aren’t as reliable as Shadow Arts if you stealth often.

The easiest way to boost DPS if you’ve invested in a defensive line is go to for crit chance and damage, since you have a base crit damage of 150% (which you don’t see in your stat view). So 30 into Critical Strikes you can pick up little over 14% crit chance, 30% crit damage, an additional conditional13% crit chance from traits, 10% damage boost while above 6 initiative which goes well with infusion of shadow for backstab builds, allowing you to maintain that buff, and executioner for +20% to foes below 50% health.

I wouldn’t take hidden killer because it just puts to waste all that real crit chance you just accumulated in addition to your berserker stats. Better to take the damage boost in my opinion.

That sets the traits to 0/30/30/0/0. The remaining 10 can go to Trickery for flanking strikes, Deadly Arts for mug or vulnerability on crit, or if you want more dodges take 5 points from Critical Strikes and put 15 into Acrobatics.

Healing skill, the best in my opinion for PVE is Signet of Malice. It has great synergy with shortbow detonate cluster bomb and D/P pistol whip on trash, healing you for significant amounts while either at range or evading. For a single target if you want to range it goes well with P/P unload as well. In terms of the activated heal it provides, it’s high to hide in shadows for PVE, but not as high withdraw.

Elite.. I swap between dagger storm and thieves guild. Dagger storm has good synergy with signet of malice and will usually heal you right up, especially if the attackers are using projectiles. Otherwise thieves guild for some extra damage.

The utility slots can be anything really. Signets for power/crit chance, shadow refuge for group heal and nipping past trash, blinding powder to remove conditions when you’re not in range to cloak and dagger anything, shadow step for 2x stun breaker, caltops for additional signet of malice healing etc. You can justify a lot of them, and will probably swap the skills around depending on what you’re doing. The same goes for weapons in my opinion. I’ll often switch between D/D+D/P, D/D+SB, D/P+SB.

15 Trickery for 3 extra initiative might look tempting, but for a backstab build which most are in PVE, infusion of shadow is superior. It’ll allow you to keep backstabbing and maintain that 25 Critical Strikes 10% buff. 15 Trickery will simply be an extra cloak and dagger right before you run out of initiative.

There are many. A good one that’s not too difficult to play is 0/30/10/0/30 with berserker stats and offensive runes. Focus on dealing damage with lightning whip and swapping to air between other attunements for the lightning strike while the heavier hitting abilities in other attunements cooldown. Stack might with superior sigil of battle and evasive arcana for earth in your fire fields. Using elemental attunement, you have permanent swiftness and regeneration (if you use the healing Glyph in water attunement when it’s needed). You have +10% damage while attuned to air, +10% while within 600 distance of your target, auras grant fury and a heal on dodge when in water.

The stats are offensive, and the traits are based on critical damage in order to keep some healing capability and reduced attunement cooldowns to get more lightning strikes and might stacks in. A squishy D/D elementalist is very viable; the 300 range on those attacks does make a difference as opposed to having to be in actual melee range of 130 distance. Signet of earth is always an option if you want a bit more toughness though.

EDIT: While elementalist lacks a “weapon damage modifier” because they are attunement-specific, with Air Training and Fresh Air you can use an ability in one attunement, change to Air before it hits, and it’ll get the 10% damage increase for being attuned to Air.

I’ve seen plenty of elementalists before the 10th December patch in PVE and PVP both, not investing in Arcane or Water, and sometimes neither. It’s just not heard much on the forums because those who have created a working build are busy playing it instead of complaining they need more DPS in their defensive traits, or more survivability in their offensive traits.

There is a learning curve for this class, and most start out playing defensive with soldier stats and focusing on healing etc. Not everyone decides to try gradually trading it off for offensive stats. If anyone has played a berserker d/d elementalist with reduced access to healing and condition removal for a good time, goes back to the bunker style, they’ll realise that the dependency on survival abilities is due to lacking survival skill. The trick is the same as for any class and any game – to constantly try to improve and find better approaches instead of settling for the first thing that works, however restricting that may be.

I’m not disputing the patch having opened up more build possibilities, however. I do think though, that a lot of people will find it difficult to change after being used to having high armour, a lot of healing, and the ability to remove conditions in an instant as opposed to relying on a trait with a 40 second cooldown.

It could be argued that the lack of perceived diversity before, and even at present, is due to the elementalist being the only class that does not have the ability to adapt in terms of attack range while in combat. Every other class can swap between close range and long range capabilities. While there is the possibility for effective builds which utilise conjured weapons as a ranged weapon swap, they don’t compare to the versatility of being able to swap between a melee and ranged weapon every 5-10 seconds. 1-2 swaps per minute isn’t a great incentive for such a build/play-style adjustment.

To sum up, I think the elementalist has always had more build diversity than the majority of players – at least on the forums – realise, and that most don’t feel comfortable trying anything with a significant change. I hope no one takes offense to anything I’ve said; being rude is never an intention but often stating facts as one sees them or reporting experiences can appear hostile or arrogant.

It’s condition burst. Very high condition damage, activate skale and spider venoms together, and use main hand pistol stealth attack for 5 fast hits inflicting poison, 5 stacks of bleeding, and 3 stacks of torment, followed by shadow strike for another 2 stacks of torment, puts 600 distance between you, and continues to apply bleeds with the main hand pistol auto attack.

I agree. An assassin is a weapons master, whatever they pick up can be used offensively and they have to be able to adapt instantly to any change in situation. For us to have access to fewer weapons than a warrior, guardian and mesmer doesn’t make sense. And to have a 10 second swap cooldown with no way to reduce it makes even less sense, especially when warriors can.

However, any two weapon combinations we pick will provide useful abilities for a wide range of situations. To allow us to equip more weapons at a time would give us a counter to everything in PVP: evades, blinds, melee bursts, range burst, auto attack poison, stealth, persuit, in-and-out, interupt, AoE burst/bleeds/poison, escapes, etc… we’d be too versatile in combat. A game cannot have a class with counters to every other class.

It might seem a reasonable request in PVE, since only a couple of the skills for each combination are used, and it’s only PVE. I don’t think it can be justified in PVP though.

I’m 100% in favour of a shorter weapon swap CD and access to A LOT more weapons.. off hand sword, and greatsword for sure.

Assuming offensive runes, I’d go power and crit damage, which presents two clear choices: Scholars and Ogre.

I’d say Scholars for PVE since it offers the highest DPS while above 90% health which you’ll eventually be able to maintain most of the time in PVE.

For PVP, it depends. If you’re a glass instant kill build, then obviously Scholars. Otherwise Ogre, since you’d then be fighting with less than 90% health most of the time, and that 4% boost will always be active. The rock dog can also come in handy sometimes.

EDIT: If you’re unsure how you want to play your thief, you can always just go with orbs until you’ve decided!

The highest burst in game goes to the elementalist. An important note is that just because there’s a video of someone killing it doesn’t mean that it’s the best time. I was at the giants with a friend on her elementalist yesterday and she did it in less than 5 seconds with the frostbow. The elementalist can stack damage modifiers like no other class, and because they aren’t weapon-specific, can maintain them while using conjured weapons.

I had a go, but am far from the highest DPS spec. I had ruby orbs instead of scholars, exotic weapons/gear, superior sigil of force instead of night, no superior sigil of undead slaying, didn’t use sweet and spicy butternut, and had berserker/valkyrie combination accessories. I did it in 17 seconds using pistol whip and 12 seconds using dagger/dagger, so with the stronger gear/runes/food may have got 9 possibly 8 seconds. Didn’t record it so I can’t be accurate to the millisecond. Traits were the well known 25/30/0/0/15 with fury+might+swiftness on steal instead of flanking strikes.

Apologies if I have the wrong idea; I just didn’t feel like watching a video.

I’ll assume you’re referring to the mesmers that pretty much spam evade and stealth until they can shatter and blurred frenzy, and repeat that sequence over and over.

The trick to finding the real mesmer is very simple. Use target lock, and maintain target lock. This is how I deal with them… Target the mesmer before they spawn any clones or phantasms. Ignore the clones and phantasms they spawn and just focus on the mesmer. They will keep teleporting and evading, so it’s good to have something like shadow shot. Eventually, the mesmer will stealth. When they do, you need to stealth too and wait them out, otherwise you’ll take too much damage from their phantasms. It’s also easier to look around when you’re not being hit, so you can watch for the mesmer to reappear. When they do, target them again and get a backstab in. Keep going until one of you dies or escapes.

If you lose the mesmer and they’re not stealthed, there are a few things you can do to find the right one: target each of them looking for signs such as signets, bloodlust stacks, protection, stability etc; watch for the one that isn’t moving like a bot; find the most robust; kill them all; or stealth and look for the one that starts to run around mindful of getting hit with a backstab.

They have too much versatility in one build. High healing, access to invulnerability, perm immobs with their turrets, and what looks like the ability to apply every condition in the game with a single button.

Since they just run in circles dropping bombs, the only somewhat effective counter I’ve found is over-use of Sword 2 to immobilise them, get a couple of hits in, then infiltrator return when they start moving again. Of course, this will be nerfed next month… They’ll hate you for it, and often trash talk, but it’s repetition v repetition. It works well in locations where you can shadow step in and out to a retreat location that they can’t see, like the balcony in Khylo and some terrain in Foefire. They can counter it if they have a lot of knockbacks though. If you can take down at least half their health, then you can stealth, go to dagger+basilisk venom and hope for a couple of nice crits.

Auesis.7301:

Impact.2780:

Auesis.7301:

Phenn.5167:

Wait wait wait. On the whole “Weakening Shroud is OP” idea. I just remembered a single thief with 15 points in Deadly Arts and a Shortbow can keep up Weakness indefinitely in AoE. Methinks this renders the whole argument for moving Weakening Shroud invalid…

Hah. Haha. No.

You can get about 1/3 uptime, 5s with 15 DA, 15s cooldown per target.

On another note, are we going to get a wall-of-text response for Thief any time soon, or are we just going to be left with Tyler’s “MASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIVE buff” post, basically ignoring all of our concerns?

No, he’s right. Shortbow 4 is a poison field lasting 4 seconds, and shortbow 2 is a blast finisher. A blast finisher in a poison field is AoE weakness for 5 seconds.

Right, but that’s not indefinitely. You’ll run out of initiative within 2 fields + 4 blasts and will have served no other purpose other than putting down the poison and weakness which will be removed fairly soon after, especially after Opportunist gets nerfed to complete uselessness. Someone doing that with Shortbow instead of just hitting hard with continuous CBs or simply running melee is a waste of a tourney spot.

Remember to count the initiative you regain while using the skills and in the time between needing to reapply the condition (10 secs) plus any additional condition duration.
It’s not useless either, the poison reduces healing and the weakness reduces non-crit damage, so it applies some pressure, let’s allies focus more on killing, and makes each hit count more. It’s a good approach when there are 3+ enemies in the area. Plus cluster bomb and your auto attack inbetween will help wear them down further, of course. It’s the play style of the glass thief with SB offhand in tourneys until they see an opportunity to go in for a kill, so they’d be getting some high hits (for shortbow) and the damage will be consistent without need to stealth/evade/heal etc.

Auesis.7301:

Phenn.5167:

Wait wait wait. On the whole “Weakening Shroud is OP” idea. I just remembered a single thief with 15 points in Deadly Arts and a Shortbow can keep up Weakness indefinitely in AoE. Methinks this renders the whole argument for moving Weakening Shroud invalid…

Hah. Haha. No.

You can get about 1/3 uptime, 5s with 15 DA, 15s cooldown per target.

On another note, are we going to get a wall-of-text response for Thief any time soon, or are we just going to be left with Tyler’s “MASSSSSSSSIIIIIIIVE buff” post, basically ignoring all of our concerns?

No, he’s right. Shortbow 4 is a poison field lasting 4 seconds, and shortbow 2 is a blast finisher. A blast finisher in a poison field is AoE weakness for 5 seconds.

RyuDragnier.9476:

The main problem with stealth is that there is no counter you can use to get rid of it. It’s not a boon, so it can’t be stripped, and a blocked attack doesn’t pull the one in stealth out of it. It also drops the opponent’s target and makes it impossible to see any damage done to the one in stealth or gauge location outside of a melee auto-attack (which is pointless to use since it leaves you open). This makes it ridiculously OP, and combined with the fact that stealth can easily stack to 15+ seconds, it’s way too much.

It needs counters…such as blocking the attack taking the person in stealth out of it, or certain ground set trap type skills getting rid of it when set off. This makes it so hard counters include Ranger traps, Necro marks, Thief traps, and ANY block from any class are counters. There, stealth is fixed. Then we can do what is truly necessary for Thief by buffing its stats and other abilities.

Dropping AoE around you is an effective counter. A good thief will only stealth to avoid damage or to heal when they need to, and they will stay in stealth for a couple of seconds giving the other the time to cast some cast time abilities or multiple AoEs. Given that you’ve been able to do that, and they are already hurting, they either have to risk trying to kill you, run, or stack stealth until the AoE is cleared. If they wait, you get time to heal, abilities cooled down, and the fight starts over; you scored points for your team by holding the node, and the thief was useless for a while. I’m arguing against crying nerf because some bad players use the traits to get permanent stealth with doesn’t really help anyone so is pointless to cry about in the first place, while good thieves make good use of it.

I can agree with blocking taking thief out of stealth. That’s a no brainer… if someone hits you and you block it, you must know where they they are. With regard to aegis, not revealing the thief is essentially letting them boon strip it.

Stealth is very easy to deal with… Once they are revealed, you know they are there. They cannot stealth again for 3-4 seconds, and when they do they’ve either run away – which a Mesmer can do with stealth while leaving phantasms to deal with (which is why I never understand why everyone moans about thieves and not stealth mesmers); an Elementalist can do with RTL; a Warrior can do with swiftness+sword 2/gs 3+5 (sometimes all 3); a Ranger with their long evades and traps; a Guardian with their knockbacks – or they are still there trying to get a backstab in, or waiting for you to reappear if you’ve also stealthed. So either run around making it hard for them to hit you, or bomb the area with AoE…

So basically thieves are getting stealth nerfed because they are the class that is able to escape while leaving you unsure as to whether they have escaped or are still there… Forget the fact that’s what thieves and deception classes are MEANT to do. Forget about balance; it’s not just taking away their ability to escape without being seen, but also taking away the ability to effectively escape at all. At the end of the day, people don’t like losing. They don’t like feeling robbed of a kill or standing around not knowing what to expect whether that’s part of the game with regard to that class or not. Forget the fact that the escapee HAD to escape from you; forget the fact that you are taking their damage and surviving, and made them run. “Nonono they are OP not me! Don’t nerf my defence/healing, nerf their mobility so I can win!”

Nerf thieves today, the QQ will be on another mobile class tomorrow. Just like it was Elementalist before Thief.

Is no escape and no mobility the ultimate slow but sure aim of the devs for this game? Was it always intended to be Kite&Bunker Wars 2? People will always complain about another class. It doesn’t always justify nerfing it to the ground and taking away other people’s fun. After this patch, unless something changes, the ground will not be far below Thief.

Regarding Elementalist

It’s nice to see a lot of the complaints about ele needing to go into Arcana have been heard. With the introduction of Fresh Air however, it was possible to get a good DPS build without needing 30 Arcane, by using Lightning Whip and the Lightning Strike on change inbetween select skills from other attunements. Despite this, a lot of eles – myself included – still went into Arcana… why? Because if you’re meleeing as the lowest health and lowest armour class in the game, you still need a lot of dodges if not healing. So while it was nice to reduce the base attunement cooldowns further improving builds using Fresh Air and not 30 Arcana, you’ve basically made it necessary for us to put 20 in Arcana for such a melee build instead of 10 by moving Renewing Stamina up a tier. A step in the wrong direction.

Some interesting changes to fire and earth. Taking away one 5% increase and making another 5% increase into a 10% increase won’t make going that far into fire more attractive than before. Changing one trait to use cleansing fire at a given point in a fight did make some sense considering it’s Cleansing “FIRE” and all the condition removal was based in the water line. That was a good change. To then give ele some condition immunity in earth was nice too, however I would like to see some more changes to earth. We are lowest health and armour, so why is the 25 trait +10% when endurance IS full. Some other classes have increased damage when it isn’t, which makes much more sense for such a squishy class. And while on the one hand seeing capability to handle conditions in other trait lines is nice.. It was also a bit disappointing not to see anything.. ‘new’, given that ele already has a lot of traits for dealing with conditions.

Regarding Thief

I love this game for its PvP, and I love using my thief for it, despite the annoyance of encountering cc heavy warriors, eles, necros and near enough invulnerable warriors (seen some running orb in spirit watch that me and another thief couldn’t even kill.. he was just running). I don’t run that annoying beyond embarrassing condition and/or evasion spamming build. I play it like I believe it was intended – an assassin class, and to be honest I prefer that style of play. This means sneaking up, taking someone out, or zipping in and out of a zerg to wear a target down, reviving allies, back capping etc.

Nerfing our regain 2 initiative on stealth will really hurt the ability to sneak up and stay in a fight for a time without having to run. If you use initiative to sneak up, you’re lacking initiative to fight for too long, and have to run sooner. I feel this change was actually to stop thieves from being able to play hit and run via stealth to make them fight properly, but for people who play the initial sneak up approach I fear it may have the opposite effect. Nerfing base initiative regain and changing the regain on crit and cd will be ok for PVE since backstabbing doesn’t have you hitting 5 times per second, you won’t notice any difference. For PvP however… any thief that isn’t abusing stealth will have been hitting 5+ times a second. The potential regain has therefore dropped from an average of 1/100*30=0.3 per second to (1/100*50)/5=0.1 per second, and a max of 5 per 5 seconds (unlikely but still) to 1 per 5 seconds. That on top of increasing the natural regain rate from 0.75 to 1 per second will hurt a lot for those who wish to stay in a fight for a length of time.

The evasion build was balanced, sacrificing DPS for survival.. I don’t see any talk about removing a warrior’s ability to block for 5 seconds, or engineers and guards from chaining invulnerability, so why stop thieves from evading for 5 seconds? If you wanted to nerf their mobility with the evades then stick a maximum distance from target cap on S/D 3, and make it only usable when there is a target. Putting a CD on Sword 2 Shadow Return will remove the ability to zip in and out of zergs. A squishy thief won’t survive in there.. and it’s also great for dealing with those engis and rangers that run around like headless chickens.

I agree with the reductions to traited initiative regain through signets, every 10 seconds etc. Because no class should be able to spam the same skill near indefinitely without a CD. However, all builds and play styles for thief in PvP have been significantly hurt except the glass thief that simply hides spamming shortbow, gets some bloodlust stacks then goes off to spam heartseeker. The thieves that spam heartseeker will still be able to spam it and run, causing the class to be hated on. So despite telling us we are an assassin class and giving us all these traits based around stealth, it appears the devs really intend for thieves to have the same stealth capabilities of a mesmer, and to only run around spamming heartseeker and hoping for some nice crits. The only thieves we’ll see in PvP now will be D/P + SB now.

It was nice to see a buff to the heal for initiative use. That had potential in PVE, but for backstabbers Shadows Rejuvination was superior. However moving it up a tier and nerfing overall initiative regen really just balanced that buff out. For that reason I doubt it will see much use.

Regarding Necromancer

I recently made a Necro for PvP and it’s quite fun. I’m running a direct damage power build rather than a condition build and it’s very effective at taking down multiple enemies. However if I wanted more survivability I’d have to sacrifice almost all of that DPS. Life siphoning is obviously – devs even stated – a key part of playing necro. But it’s so weak. The only way to get a decent amount of life siphoning is by running around with an army of minions.. but if I wanted to play PVE, I wouldn’t be in PvP. I’m not alone in this either – a lot of my friends complain about joining a PvP match and there being 5x the number of NPCs as there are players. It is also worse than face rolling. The minions do the bulk of the healing work for you. Life siphoning needs a very big buff, whether great increase to the healing it provides or a smaller increase with the ability to siphon and heal while in death shroud.

Stone Splinters (Earth VI) isn’t a 10% increase. It was 5% before the patch, and the tooltip might say 10% now, but it is still 5%. I suspect a hotfix will set it back to say 5% rather than increase it to actually be 10%.
It would be nice if it is to be made 10% though – better than the attunement-specific 10% increase traits we have.

Ele has enough survivability for berserkers. Look at other classes. They may have more health and armour, but less healing capabilities and if meleeing within150 range may find it harder to evade. Yet they do fine in PVE. Most ele’s are so hung up on trying to avoid dying that it’s all they think about, and bring little to a group in PVE. The trick is to have enough to offset the low armour and health, and invest the rest into damage.

0/10/0/30/30 of course can do PVE with berserkers. That is traited for survival and can afford losing toughness and vitality. I run COF, Arah, 20+ and sometimes 30+ fractals in D/D berserkers with berserker/valkyrie ascended trinkets for that extra bit of health, traited 0/25/0/15/30. Knights is the other candidate simply because the toughness improves your effective health which in turn improves the effectiveness of your healing, thereby significantly increasing survivability with minimal DPS loss.

In some cases berserker won’t lose you any survivability because you’d get 1 shot in PVT just the same, so berserker would help finish the fight quicker, thereby reducing the chances of you taking that hit, thereby actually increasing survivability =P.

It is definitely more fun to play PVE when you can deal some heavy damage. I’ve seen bunker ele’s out-survive an entire group when they die, and then sometime after while constantly attacking a red barred boss unable to finish it off before dying themselves. When this happens to another class, their health might decline faster but they manage to kill it.

In the end you can’t know for sure until you try. You may need patience too; switching from PVT to berserker might be a little difficult at first, until you discover how much you can take and what to expect in terms of incoming damage. I went from PVT to knights then berserker. You’ll also find fast movement, reactions and evading is that much more important.

I can’t really comment on WvW; I stick with knights and celestial trinkets there.