Guild Wars 2

Oh overload earth+stow weapon = another safe stomp. Got to plan ahead with it though.

Because PvP is a game mode. Not a training zone. If it was free to try in PvP, people who only PvP wouldn’t need to buy the expansion, while people who PvE would. Now which of these scenarios is the fair one?

Cat Has Ducks.1982:

At least you have to be rank 20 to play ranked and no crap maps.

I’d forgotten about this. It’s brilliant. They finally gave us a minimum rank req to play ranked.
Players: Rejoice, finally, yay!
ANet: trolololololololol next month we gunna lock it for everyone!

Hi. I don’t really play ele but I like messing with traits. I’m usually not far off when a new meta is around the corner.

I’ve found some awesome synergy between Arcana, Water and Tempest which, is an unlikely combination even after several glances. Basically this build is based on the current role of D/D ele, but allows the ele to counter conditions for itself and allies extremely hard with AoE 600 radius cleanses separate from water attunement, provides protection with increased effectiveness, and provides near permanent vigor to allies (permanent to self), which is frequently applied and each application grants 10 endurance. This build essentially gives back some of the endurance regen lost with the vigor nerf to allies, and to itself it’s as if vigor was never nerfed. It has dodges (not evades) to match an S/D thief.

How does it work?
- Rune: Shouts remove a condition.
- Trait(water): Regeneration application removes a condition
- Trait(tempest): Auras grant regeneration and vigor.
- Trait(tempest): Grant vigor to allies when attuning to water. When granting vigor to allies (or yourself [undocumented], also grant yourself (and them [undocumented]) 10 endurance
- Utility skills: Shout granting an aura x2.

I’m at a bit of a snag though. First is stability for safe stomps. Armour of Earth works of course, but it’s a 75s cd unless taking cantrip mastery – one trait for one skill isn’t very appealing. The other is boon duration.

On the one hand I suspect the meta is going to get tankier so D/D ele’s damage, while good, won’t be as much of a bonus as it was vs having say, a bunker guard. However, on the other hand the might isn’t just for the ele, but allies too. It still does good damage for support, and it looks like the support is stronger than the current D/D ele. I have four variants, and I think the first is as good as I can get it, but as I said I don’t really play ele, so I don’t have the experience. All I have are what it looks like on paper =P.

Note: The calc is out dated. Tempest Master #2 and Minor #3 have changed.
Master #2: (reworked) Invigorating Torrents. Auras you apply grant regeneration and vigor.
Minor #3: (added) Protection has increased effectiveness. -40% incoming damage.

1) http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vFAQJAo4mcMA9XCWYiFWAz9q2VLrEJgDQAo4Im/qAA-TJRHwAFeAA82fAwJA4YZAA
This one loses all its might duration, trading it for being able to provide extremely strong condition cleansing and more powerful healing to allies. It keeps its own might the same however, by using sigil of battle again, giving up sigil of energy. It gives up energy sigil because of the permanent vigor and 10 endurance gain on each frequent application. The condition cleansing is separate from water, and covers 600 range.

2) Same as 1, but keeping sigil of energy because perhaps in practice, the endurance return isn’t fast enough.

3) This variant keeps might duration by keeping rune of hoelbrak and not using rune of the solider. This means while cleansing to self is still very strong through weapon skill auras and soothing ice, the cleansing to allies outside of water is weakened significantly. Still, it’s stronger than the current D/D ele, but it’s outshined by shoutbow and bunker guard for cleansing due to the range limitation.

3) This variant gives up offhand dagger for warhorn. It essentially keeps the might duration since it loses it from the rune set, but gains boon duration from Tempest by switching Elemental Bastion for Improved Melodies, which also extends active boons by 2 seconds via weapon skill and passively with a trait. However, the offhand dagger skills updraft for downed, one aura for self given the build, fire grab, AoE knockdown, and ride the lighting (mobility) are significant losses, and Heat Sync which sounds good doesn’t seem to work properly at the moment.

One utility slot and the elite skill are variables. Options could be Armour of Earth or Eye of the Storm, and Firery Greatsword or Rebound.

I knew it. Every time they promote all these new, good looking things. Then when it comes there’s something that wasn’t clearly specified, or specified at all, and it’s a huge negative. I’m not even queuing right now, and probably won’t even bother until ranked is back, or unranked has at the very least, spirit watch and courtyard removed.

Caedmon.6798:

Ashkew.6584:

Because everyone hates rangers and no one will ress them but there pets. But serieusly “why”? Probably because its designed to work like that. Fair? Probably not but, but i wish we didnt have downstate in the first place

Oh i wish …i wish.Downed state is still the worst of the worst kittening mechanics ive ever witnessed in an mmo,and that wont ever change.

I disagree. It adds counter play to high burst/“1 shotting,” and can also be used as an advantage for either side depending on the situation. The worst of the worst is precision and ferocity. They should provide straight up damage increases – modifiers equivalent to the average DPS increase they provide – and it means someone not running those stats doesn’t have a chance to match or exceed your damage when you’re trading a few blows. Switch RNG/luck for more skill-based combat and more defining builds. A critical hit should only be achievable with a temporary buff acquired from a trait or upgrade component.

Silent The Gray.3091:

It’s like everyone that pvp’s now gets their build from metabattle and can’t come up with something creative and think for themselves.

1) Where do you think the builds on Metabattle come from?
2) Plenty of people run non-meta builds, and I find it gets annoying after a while when you constantly have 1-2 S/D rangers vs a meta or closer-to-meta comp, because it’s like 4v5 or even 3v5. Un-versatile or even role-less builds make me fed up with PvP.
3) Just because you choose to run what has been deemed optimal by the majority of the PvP player-base, doesn’t mean you aren’t creative or that you can’t think for yourself. Can’t an individual compare builds – some they made and some meta – conclude for themselves that the meta one is better, and choose it? Does that make them un-creative and sheepish? If you believe so, then you’re lying to yourself, and your problem isn’t that they aren’t thinking, but that you aren’t or aren’t good enough and want to fix it by having others run sub-optimal builds that allow you a chance. I suggest working on getting better instead of appealing on the forums to make others worse.

I hope by “even 5 versus 1 couldn’t kill any of them,” you meant simply, couldn’t kill, as in they escaped. Not, they held a point 1v5, because then it’s a different problem than “these classes are OP!”

BFMV.3198:

Thieves essentially have no weapon swap as you will never(or rarely) see a thief without shortbow.

This reasoning is so bad. You all choose this weapon to swap to, because it’s the best option. Yet, because you chose the best option for your weapon swap, you basically have no weapon swap. Completely false. The inverse isn’t even true: if the only weapon you can choose to have to swap to is so bad you never use it, you essentially don’t have a weapon swap. Then it’d be a problem with that weapon and or all the other options. You don’t not have something because you have it.

The issue is it’s intended to be used to interrupt foes, to benefit from on-interrupt traits. It does need a very short cast time with no after-cast, though, so it can still serve its purpose without allowing the mesmer to be casting a burst combo at the same time. An "activation time" as previously mentioned could also work, but would create yet more particle effects around the mesmer.

It also means when you see the mesmer’s burst coming, and you dodge it, you will successfully counter play it instead of having your dodge suddenly interrupted or prevented.

Zodryn.4216:

I don’t see how bound risks revealing you. It’s not like you are constantly dodging while in stealth. That’s one of the main benefits of stealth, damage mitigation without blowing endurance. Also, the ability to deal damage on dodge absolutely benefits power D/P builds. Every little bit helps.

Even dash isn’t bad. Follow it up with shadow shot for more damage mitigation or heartseeker if they’re below 25% and you’re right back in melee range.

That 7% extra damage is also quite good. Coupled with bound, that’s 17%, which is like having executioner all of the time.

Unless you’re making a serious build for PvP, you’re not going to run both Daredevil AND Shadow arts, so no, you wouldn’t have damage mitigation while in stealth. And even when you do, you still need to dodge things while in stealth, be it to survive, to remain at a comfortable health level, or to get out of range of something quickly when movement impaired. If you don’t find yourself having to dodge often in stealth, then the players you face aren’t nuking your shadow refuge, and or aren’t experienced enough to work out where you’ll be when you’re in stealth. If a warrior is going to GS 3 through my SR, I’m going to dodge even if another enemy player is inside it trying to hit me. If a thief is around trying to kill me, I’m going to want to dodge so I don’t take a 3-6k back stab + more hits following the resulting panic strike. If a mesmer approaches about to use GS 5 to knock me out, I’m going to want to dodge to avoid losing stealth, yet, dodging with bound would break stealth when it damages the mesmer or a clone. If an engi is going to throw grenades covering the AoE I’m going to want to dodge to avoid getting revealed by his trait. If an ele nukes the refuge I’m going to want to dodge burning speed at least.

Azure The Heartless.3261:

Bllade.1029:

Replace it with a mechanic that allows one person to see and target people in stealth for x amount of time. Lets call it "Clairvoyance"; so the profession would still be in stealth and couldn’t be targeted by everyone and their mother. They would still gain the passive defensive traits stealth gives but it also stealth no longer would be a free "get out of jail" card.

Sounds like that would depend on having whether a player is revealed or not be client sided.

Client sided means hackers.

Unless I’m ignorant of a better way to do that.

Probabllly not. but I like the concept.

No, the server must know where you are even in stealth. If it knows, it can communicate that information to any player within rendering distance that has a buff enabling them to see stealthed players, or a buff to see a single previously targeted stealthed player. Players without that buff would not be told the location of that player by the server.

Perhaps you’re thinking it would enable individual players with such a buff, having been told the stealthed player’s location by the server, to then use a program to automatically communicate to their team mates’ instance of GW2 the location of that player, intercepting and or injecting the necessary code such that the player then becomes visible on their game client. That would be possible, I suppose, but a little extreme. I mean, it’d only be done if at all by close premade teams, which means they have voice communication, so why not simply tell them where the stealthed player is located.

Condi dodge doesn’t synergise with D/P because D/P is power based.
Dash doesn’t synergise because D/P needs to maintain pressure, and dash moves you out of melee range. D/P already has enough gap closers.
Bound doesn’t synergise with D/P because D/P relies on stealth a lot for moving around without getting ganked, and to escape. The damage from bound, and the condi dodge as well, risk revealing you.

More damage trait from adept tier? Good. It’’s not burst, though. Hidden Thief in Shadow Arts gives you quicker burst.
Condi cleanse and heal on evade? Good. Synergises with shortbow 3 and the improved endurance regeneration via gain 50 on steal, and starting fights with an extra dodge. The healing synergises with sigil of blood and rune of vampirism to provide some sustain when having to 1v1 another squishy on the outskirts of a team fight, or sustain on point a little to hold a neut or cap until a hard target ally arrives on point. Shadow’s Embrace in Shadow Arts also cleanses condis when entering stealth, and prioritises damaging ones. Shadow’s Rejuvenation in Shadow Arts also heals you, while in stealth, and may be as good as or better than healing on successful evade.

In addition, Shadow Arts also gives you: -25% damage to anyone in stealth applied by you, and stealth on reviving an ally allowing you to save team fights with a quick stomp prevention and res, and survive better.

Shadow Arts has a lot of internal synergy, and more synergy with D/P. Daredevil doesn’t really have internal synergy, aside from a couple of on dodge or evade traits and gaining 1 more dodge every 20s dependent on you landing a steal.

Stick with Deadly Arts, Trickery and Shadow Arts.

Doggie.3184:

So many times this happens to me on 100% flat terrain with direct path to target. Fricken game’s a fat liar.

Flat terrain? I think not. Amid every open plane, lies a deadly pebble.

Being serious now, though, it’s a ninja nerf. People complained about thief ports and wanted them gone while ANet had already reworked all ports to be stronger. Without ports, thief would be completely broken. A useless class. They had to create the illusion that we were still fine, while still keeping with the tradition and nerfing us in response to the cries of the lazy, want-one-button-to-win type of players.

Enter, the pebble.

ANet, secretly, buffed stones to counter us.

I’ll let you just take that in. You got ambushed, and your opponent(s) +1’d by, the terrain.

Before shadow steps were reworked (greatly buffed) we saw less of this message for ports which visually should clearly succeed. This was because, if you couldn’t get to the target location, the game would just travel you up to the detected obstruction (usually an overpowered blade of grass or a giant boulder disguised as a grain of dirt on the terrain). The no valid path to target issues were still present, you just didn’t notice. We started noticing because that bit of code became bugged, and it seems ANet only just figured it out and said they will fix it so it works again with the release of HoT. In the same post they pretty much admitted that they won’t be making changes to remove the "no valid path to target" problem where ports should be successful, or fix the few positions where you can actually cast your port, have the validation deem it to be a valid port, only to have the result consume the skill and not port you with no error message.

So downside, it doesn’t appear that they even intend to try and fix it. Upside, if your port is deemed invalid, you should still travel part way to your intended destination.

Trigr.6481:

• You cannot enter stealth while in combat, however rogues can use vanish to equivalent effect.

http://wowwiki.wikia.com/wiki/Vanish:

Vanish is a core rogue ability learned at level 34. It allows the rogue to disappear from sight, entering an improved stealth mode for three seconds; it also breaks movement impairing effects. All aggroed mobs on the rogue will exit combat and return to their original locations or turn to other players if the rogue is in a party. During the three seconds any damage the rogue takes will not break stealth. After the three seconds, the rogue will enter normal [Stealth].

So, comparatively speaking (with WoW), GW2 does not have stealth, but some classes have access to vanish. Your comparison with WoW does not stand; WoW instead implements a similar mechanic to GW2’s stealth, and also allows any and all classes to freely enter a more... fragile version, with no time limit. You could even argue for such a thing in WvW to be added to GW2, but in terms of SPvP, having free unlimited albeit fragile out-of-combat-only stealth on a conquest map would create more complaints.

I too, noticed that you avoided mentioning the fact that stealth (and vanish) expire after a short time (with the exception of Prismatic Understanding buffed stealth which I argue should never have existed).

Conclusion? Your comparison is inaccurate and one-sided, and even if it weren’t, every implementation, at one time or another, was new and stood either alone in what it aimed to achieve, or stood different to all other implementations aiming to achieve a similar result, so the argument "it doesn’t conform to a pattern of similar implementations seen in similar MMOs with similar combat systems (note similar, because the differences are key to arguing for/against and justification, not pattern conformity) does not hold up, and is also invalid just like the comparison.

Jaxom.7310:

Impact.2780:

.............
Perhaps if those players had never gone to hot join for their first taste of PvP, they would have stuck around in PvP instead of finding it annoying and unstructured, and leaving.

there are a ton of raisins why #of players in pvp has dropped.

-no soloq
-very few add’l modes (still no tru tdm, gw1 RA style arena)
-very infreq balance updates
-long queues w/ resulting matches being awful.
-mmr makes playing streaky. lots of wins in a row, then lots of losses in a row.

chikin or the egg? bad mmr leading to bad matches leading to players getting bored/frustrated and bailing on pvp, or long queues leading to board players so fewer people queue so its harder for mmr to give good matchups.

it don’t matter. but u can’t say hotjoin is the raisin we have less players

You’re right, I can’t. That is in fact, why I didn’t. I said those players, specifically. You’re just strengthening my argument for the removal of hot join by saying things I chose not to, due to the risk of taking the thread off topic. If all those hot joiners had been queueing, they would have:
- acquired an accurate MMR
- given the queues more players, thus making queue times shorter, resulting in fewer quitting due to ridiculously long waiting periods
- given the queues more classes and MMR values, thereby giving the MM algorithm more to work with thus likely improving the quality of matches, resulting in happier players, resulting in fewer quitting due to poor matches and low player base.

Edit: And before you say, "You can’t say hot join is the cause of fewer players queuing and poor matches," I will again say, you’re right, I can’t, and that is why I didn’t. There are many factors, but one factor not being the sole cause does not make it an irrelevant point, or nullify its contribution to the issue.

You’re not curing anything where hot join is concerned; you’re putting a bandage on it. In fact, you’re not even doing that with a "queue" system, because hot join has no matchmaking other than that which players choose based on what is already on the teams, which they can’t see if they have to queue first.

The cure? Get rid of hot join completely. I count 68 players in hot join right now on NA. It used to be much higher. Now the PvP player base for queues and hot join both is tiny compared to two, even one, year ago. Perhaps if those players had never gone to hot join for their first taste of PvP, they would have stuck around in PvP instead of finding it annoying and unstructured, and leaving.

Lithril Ashwalker.6230:

steal should be unblockable first of all and undodgable…its an instant cast and would only make sense…why allow mantras to not be blockable/dodgeable as instant cast and not this?

You can block and evade mantras.

Shogun.7401:

Hulken.1385:

About the grandmasters and different dodge types:

I would like to have the 3 dodge types aviable as attunements (like ele has it). Each with it’s ICD (10 sec. maybe).

The grandmasters than would buff one of the dodge-attunements. (10% bonus physical damage after dodging and reduced CD for Bounding Dodger etc.)

This way thiefs would have access to all three dodge-types in one fight but one type is always stronger than the other two.

Also condi thiefs wouldn’t be bound to Impaling Lotus etc.

This is a must. I don’t know why they are not listening to us. At least tell us why they can’t implimebt this.

At the very least for the two that deal damage, revert to normal dodge while in stealth, or allow us to toggle it on or off. Unless you’re D/P with SA and or vamp runes, you’re going to die inside refuge being unable to dodge.

Reducing the cast time on the heal skill would have been interesting to try out. I didn’t even give it any consideration with the 2.5s cast time.

Adding additional effects to the grandmaster traits is very good. It makes them more grandmaster. As it is, I still see the bound as reckless dodge with a new animation.

The new Havoc trait sounds great. It’d be a good candidate vs the weakness one. It fits the dare devil theme nicely, being that you have to be within a close range, and gives thieves back some damage that kept being taken away, which we need now with the crazy burst mesmers are putting out, and all the invulnerability skills used in the meta combined with strong support to undo the damage you did.

I’m not sure whether I’d put reduced damage from weakened foes or torment. Reduced damage sounds good for us but we have to build mostly for defense already, and weakness is already very strong and very annoying when it’s easily always on you from necros and other thieves. It depends on how many stacks and the duration of the condition, and the magnitude of the damage reduction I suppose. I’d probably take extra damage, even if it’s only a few stacks of torment at 0 condition damage, given the choice. It’d also give condi thieves something new to enjoy (and annoy me with).

There is still the issue of Steal. Dare devil doesn’t expand on it like the elite specs for the other classes did, at all. It just gives us one more bonus to landing steal. We now have: Deal 1.7-2k damage, gain 1.9k health, remove 2 boons, grant a stack of stolen boons to allies, gain vigor (~50% up-time, only source), daze target so you don’t take hits on arrival, gain 50 endurance, that we lose all of to a random dodge, unlucky blind, target enters stealth 2ms before activating, target goes invuln or blocks 2ms before activating etc. So many eggs in one basket. Some of this really should be baseline, because without beefing steal up, it’s so weak, and no other class loses so much of its build’s effectiveness and fails so many of its traits to one skill not hitting.

TheGuy.3568:

Or you could be focused squarely on the win and not how well you played personally. So many break it down to wins and loses but I have won and felt like I put in a kitten poor effort. I have lost and felt good because I was winning my match ups. Perception is key here. I could get a great or bad team based on the stats. I rather be a great player myself win or lose.

The problem isn’t losing. Losing is merely a result. The issue is the quality of the match. I play to play, and I like to play, and when I get to play and lose it’s still fun. But if you have bunkers that want to solo beast on forest, then cry when everyone dies at mid before he gets there, and people who die 2v4 on mid because you did a 3 point split but one guy went to beast and they didn’t think "4 of them here, out numbered 2 to 1, fight lost already, time to rotate out. Oh look, we have sides, let’s split to sides." You might win your match far, or manage to decap it so you have close, lost mid, decapped or capped far, but then you have +2 turning it into a 3v1 so you leave, your respawns go to close and lose again because the bunker decided despite needing to regroup and defending close achieves that and another objective, and despite there being 3 enemy players around far, to go take their beast to be "useful" while waiting for the team to respawn. It of course gets stolen, and it of course is his team’s fault for dying and not helping him PvE. The rest of the match is you running between points with 2-3 chasing you, trying to decap something to keep your team in the game while they insist on snowballing close until the end. I don’t consider this playing, therefore it’s not fun.

I had one alright match all night, and I still left it annoyed because first 3 guys kept trying to kill a bunker necro on close, on his capped point and dying, but not getting smart and thinking let’s go try somewhere else, and second after they listened to me and we started to come back a bit, the ranger went back to close and despite 2 of us constantly telling him not to, continued to 1v1, die, respawn, try again, die, respawn, try again, for the entire second half of the match. He was also the only other source of spike damage besides myself, which we needed combined vs that particular composition. I literally, 100% honestly died, at mid, with all my CDs, toward the end of the match just because they got both sides again, I looked map and saw the ranger STILL suiciding, and went to type something, but couldn’t. I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t think of what to say, I was that stunned. Struck with sudden and complete despair at my fellow human being. Experiencing that level of dimwit, is not fun either.

It did seem better after the patch. Tonight it’s worse than ever, though. Crazy class stacking, stronger comps losing by 400 points, all-match home-zerging, and if I didn’t know any better, I’d swear some were tripping over a pebbles on the terrain and falling into downed state.

I just logged in, and all my boots on only my thief have taken on the heavy scale helmet skin. When the helm appearing boots are equipped, the resulting appearance is bare feet, and the scale helmet merged with the currently equipped head style. Relogging didn’t fix. None of the other characters seem affected, and I had a friend check his thief, but he said his was normal.

…What?

I did change my head style to those horns from the trading post yesterday. I was going to do it for Daredevil on the beta weekend but they never appeared in the wardrobe for my beta character. This is the only thing I can think of that might have brought this on. Although, I did relog several times yesterday since making the change, and this didn’t happen.

http://s24.postimg.org/kl8i7ilpg/gw148.jpg
http://s8.postimg.org/jiownsptg/gw149.jpg
http://s1.postimg.org/td3uewfxa/gw150.jpg

This is similar to a build I made. I don’t main engi and haven’t really played it since the specialisation update. http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhatYnXwdLQ7FLTGF9cX37t4zcABw46VBRAA-TJhHwAAuAABeAAj2fwYZAA
A friend made this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vdAQFASlUUhatY1VwdLQ7FLTGF9bX37N40ldhk4zcABAA-TJhHwAAuAABeAAj2fwYZAA
Not that I’m saying those are good or better. I’d definitely make some changes now, but anyway...

I’m not good on D/D ele. I mained it when I was new, but eventually found it repetitive and boring, and went thief when I started doing PvP only. I rarely play ele unless I’m doing casual 1v1s. It’s a fair point I mention because my friend was obviously no expert at scrapper after 2 days of it, and I beat his scrapper build using D/D without much trouble, and as tempest with trouble. It’s not OP at all, and I don’t understand why quite a few people seem to think it’s going to replace D/D ele. If anything, it’ll replace GS warrior for the same reason engi replaced hambow warrior around this time last year: it can apply the same pressure as well as some defensive support, and when you have another source of support, your main support lives longer, and in turn supports longer, and so on, resulting in a significant increase to sustainability.

The other candidate to replace GS warrior is revenant. It’ll be competing against scrapper, in my opinion. I did think it’d be reaper but after seeing it, I no longer think so. It still lacks mobility as well. If scrapper wins, Daredevil S/D thief may become viable again since it seems to be able to deal very good pressure to scrapper with its evades and now great condi removal, and as always it has pros and cons vs taking D/P in terms of roles. It depends how the meta shifts - whether sustained damage will become more valuable. After all, with the buffs mesmers have, they hardly need a D/P thief to spike someone down from stealth anymore; the damage provided from S/D would be sufficient, and S/D would be able to go toe and toe with builds running a lot of condi pressure now as well. It also depends on whether 2 D/D eles will remain a thing, or whether bunker guardians will return in full, replacing 1 D/D ele. However, if marauder revenant becomes meta, it will be a counter to S/D. Engi is the one that counter-pressures a thief, but a revenant can catch an S/D thief trying to escape, so attempts at 1v1ing or +1ing a 2v1 to try and turn the tide where there is a revenant, would likely get them killed, so they’d avoid doing so thus restricting what they can do. Then again, S/D can cope in a team fight so perhaps it’d still be ok.

TLDR; it’s all up in the air at the moment, and the only certainty is D/D ele is here to stay.

Edit: Another reason it won’t replace D/D ele is on the point about supporting, it doesn’t support anywhere near as much as D/D ele does, so it’d cost the team sustainability. Furthermore, I believe scrapper won’t be quite as tanky as it appears to be at the moment. All traits that trigger on heal skill use, trigger once for the initial activation. Recovery Matrix (Scrapper, Adept 3: "Using your heal skill temporarily reduces damage you receive. Protection 6 sec") triggers on both Healing Turret and Cleansing Burst giving a very high up-time on protection. I believe this is a bug and will likely be fixed to only trigger when deploying the healing turret, or be given an ICD of 10-15 secs.

Thief OP. Didn’t even need to land a hit. Perma stealth. Nerf inc.

Maybe one day, since other classes are slowly pulling ahead of thief with each balance patch, and new elite specialisations are supposedly going to be released in future which as seen for mesmer, can be a significant buff and therefore another chance for all classes to receive greater buffs and tweaks than the thief. But right now, I don’t think thief will drop out of meta. The current D/P meta build remains strong at what it does, and the fact remains that a team without a thief is at a disadvantage vs a team with a thief.

That said, Daredevil is very disapointing since it’s got desirable traits that cannot be used. They should be in the Acrobatics line, and Daredevil be something different. Our class mechanic is terrible without Trickery; we need the reduced CD, daze and vigor. The elite spec was meant to expand on our mechanic, turning it into something different. Daredevil doesn’t even try to do this, so even with it, we still need Trickery. An extra dodge, but no extra endurance regeneration does not work very well. Our best grandmaster? A minor trait taken from warrior’s plus a new animation. It looks fun, there are some good trait ideas there, and it’s clear that a lot of work went into it. Just no where near as much as for other classes, and consequentially, it’s no where near as deserving of the name "elite specialisation" as those of other classes.

Daredevil is in no way elite. It’s got some nice options, but it’s impractical since the vigor changes, and due to the fact that other trait lines are mandatory. D/P works better with Shadow Arts. S/D could make good use of the traits there, but it doesn’t add enough punch to allow S/D to compete in terms of burst, and S/D was barely viable without Acrobatics before the vigor change; now it needs that improved vigor, and near 100% up-time to be on par in terms of survivability with itself before the vigor nerf. Our class mechanic is rubbish without building it up with Trickery, S/D needs Acrobatics, that means Trickery/Acrobatics/Daredevil, and that of course is not meta material because you lose the offensive buffs from Deadly Arts or even Critical Strikes. You’re a DPS roamer that has taken three defensive trait lines just to be able to survive enough to perform a role, instead of building for that role.

I do feel quite jelous of mesmer right now. Not only did they get a bunch of their "mandatory" traits made baseline, which we didn’t, they have gotten a very creative elite spec that, most importantly, is great and will definitely be used in PvP meta. Meanwhile thieves are still forced to take Trickery and have this fun looking elite spec which is pointless to use.

Note it looks fun, not cool. Setting practicality and viability aside, it doesn’t compare to the likes of Chronomancer, Reaper, Scrapper or even Tempest in terms of creativity and appearance. We just have a couple of traits which we should have in Acrobatics, and Reckless Dodge made grandmaster because it comes with a new animation.

1) Significant damage increase for offensive roles
or
2) New game mode received that works off a separate meta, and is liked a lot more than conquest by the majority, including most teams.

When I came back after the update a month or two ago, I noticed a significant damage reduction when I should have been doing more damage after the update. I didn’t know why, and I didn’t bother investigating. Then a friend told me that blood sigil was used over fire now. Ridiculous, I thought; fire does more damage, is AoE, and can show you where a stealthed foe is. While this remains true, he said the damage of fire and air sigils received a ninja/stealth nerf, such that blood was now better because it essentially offered the lost damage as healing to yourself instead of having it gone completely. While fire is still AoE and shows you where a stealthed target was struck, if you’re experienced enough you can often find them in stealth anyway, and in coordinated teams there will be AoE and cc from team mates, and as for being AoE, the small amount of AoE damage is trivial. The main thing is that it adds to your single target damage, because that is what’s important for damage dealing in PvP.

I never tested the claim that the damage was nerfed, I just took his word for it because I had noticed a loss of damage where there should have been a greater difference gained.

Edit: Blood always scaled. Just very, very poorly.

Great class. Great fun. Finally something new that suits my play style other than S/D thief (and D/P for 3-4 matches until I’m bored of it)!

I’ve only tried DPS builds on this class so far, and I didn’t participate in the previous betas.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vlAQNAsXmnvN2gS6JvQRZlbosryPUYV5IKYs8ElFOFS9F3oHtBYANwOgFchA-TpgTABoWGAg9HAA

It’s a shame about Vampirism #6 and Soothing Bastion triggering together when both are off cooldown, but the runes synergise too well with the build and playstyle of this class to not take them. There will be times the mist still saves you though.

The only quarrel I have with this class are:
1) It took a few times for me to realise why exactly I couldn’t activate another upkeep skill. The UI for it is clear once you work it out, but a text-popup telling you why you can’t might be nice.
2) A post I made in another thread (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Herald-holds-too-much-of-the-Rev-s-power/first):

Herald to Revenant does seem to be like the Arcana of Elementalists. Devastation/Invocation/Retribution builds might do ok – that was the first selection I tried when I started trying out the class, with Sword/Axe + Hammer. (I’ve only tried DPS builds so far but it definitely seems like it has other viable builds including support and condi). I’ve gotten better with the class mechanic and at reacting to situations quickly since then, but I did change to a new build using Herald, which does seem like the must-have trait line for anything except perhaps a condition build. It doesn’t look crazy strong, but when you realise the Revenant’s style is self-healing, the protection, heal skill are crucial to surviving in a team fight, and and the Herald’s 2nd and 3rd utility skills are the only ones which provide decent damage output. So Herald is for damage dealing, supporting, and tanking. That certainly makes it seem worthy of the title “elite,” but a) not so worthy of being called a “specialisation,” and b) at the same time how can something the class has to rely on so heavily not be part of the core? It’s a fair question, and is cause for concern when the next set of elite specialisations are released. If this elite specialisation is so crucial, and a must-have, just how different can the next one be? Will Herald be nerfed a couple of months before the next one is released so everyone will drop Herald and use the new, much like how they approached Acrobatics for the Thief?

1v1’d a condi engi on point with Assassin and Dragon. The self-healing with good use of the blocking and evading skills is strong enough to hold out. Toward the end I did have to start obstructing and probably would have lost in the end, but I lasted 2 minutes on the point keeping it neutral. Every build has to have a weakness. As for Shiro, it’s mandatory to escape immobilise if you’re running squishy.

Edit: Definitely agree that the energy cost of the Demon utilities are too high. The taunt utility on Dwarf too... And I hate that condition. In my opinion only mesmers a little and ranger’s birds should be able to use it.

Herald to Revenant does seem to be like the Arcana of Elementalists. Devastation/Invocation/Retribution builds might do ok - that was the first selection I tried when I started trying out the class, with Sword/Axe + Hammer. (I’ve only tried DPS builds so far but it definitely seems like it has other viable builds including support and condi). I’ve gotten better with the class mechanic and at reacting to situations quickly since then, but I did change to a new build using Herald, which does seem like the must-have trait line for anything except perhaps a condition build. It doesn’t look crazy strong, but when you realise the Revenant’s style is self-healing, the protection, heal skill are crucial to surviving in a team fight, and and the Herald’s 2nd and 3rd utility skills are the only ones which provide decent damage output. So Herald is for damage dealing, supporting, and tanking. That certainly makes it seem worthy of the title "elite," but a) not so worthy of being called a "specialisation," and b) at the same time how can something the class has to rely on so heavily not be part of the core? It’s a fair question, and is cause for concern when the next set of elite specialisations are released. If this elite specialisation is so crucial, and a must-have, just how different can the next one be? Will Herald be nerfed a couple of months before the next one is released so everyone will drop Herald and use the new, much like how they approached Acrobatics for the Thief?

Just a few quick points on the dodge, and I’m sorry if they’ve already been said but I don’t have much time and would rather spend most of it in game than on forums =P.

I’m not sure I like that you -have- to alter your dodge by going into Daredevil, but I understand that you can’t very well spread the three options across all three trait tiers because then you could potentially have hyper-dodging thieves. But since we have to alter it, some things should be taken into account:
- Normal dodge does not interrupt your auto attack chain; because these new dodges are considered "skills," they reset your auto chain. This is extremely bad, especially for sword and staff.
- There is an after cast? It’s not really a "better" version of dodge if it has frames in which you can be hit and can’t do anything about it.
- It’s quite difficult, often impossible, to deal damage at the end of your dodge similar to how reckless dodge or evasive arcana works, because of the added travel distance. If you and your opponent are keeping close so if either tries to run, you can still get a few melee strikes in before they are out of range - which both players almost always do - then your dodge becomes just a longer cast time movement consisting of the same evade duration plus some vulnerable frames. Plus, at the end you’re out of melee range of your opponent when you might not want to be. If you’re trying to be on the offensive, you just gave them breathing room and if it’s anything with some sustain, it’s a huge help to your opponent. That’s negative, negative, and negative, for something that’s meant to be an improvement for us.

Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea. There are just some issues which really really need to be addressed. Personally, I’d keep the new animations, lower the damage a bit, keep the normal dodge travel distance, make the animation the same duration as a normal dodge, and make it not reset the auto attack chain.

On a less serious, but disappointed note: Pulmonary Impact in the same tier as Escapist’s Absolution? QQ.

Edit: Just did a quick check to be sure, and it turns out it’s the same travel distance as a normal dodge after all. This is surprising because both myself and a friend yesterday swore it was a longer distance, and it really affected the flow of our combat. He even stuck by that when he switched to duel me on another class. I wonder what it is that makes it feel like you’re going further, because I swear it messes up positioning. Perhaps it’s the cast time and or after cast? If so, great, please fix that and it’s two birds with one stone!

Edit 2: Oh and it should go without saying but, this really needs to work flawlessly for thieves, because it comes with a huge drawback already: dodging can break stealth. Often, this will make shadow refuge un-useable unless you let vampirism runes put you into mist.

Edit 3: Another issue found: you can swap weapons while normal dodging. With the altered dodge, weapon swap cancels the skill.

The staff skills look like they could be fun to use; the set certainly has the "thief theme" as I perceive it, which is to have tools to deal with whatever gets thrown at it, but it does seem extremely weak in the damage department, and I’m sorry but I just can’t see thief being anything but a mobile damage dealer. I’m interested to see how the new trait line compares to acrobatics, because I’d like to at least try taking one of two of those new utility skills with my current/new S/D build.

If it’s to be a tanky, supporty monk-like character, the new trait line will need to be chock-full of overpowered supportive traits just to create the slightest chance of a viable support build in the meta.

I was never aware that it was considered role. It’d be like calling 100 blades a role, or fear a role. In fact, "+1" is a small part of what comes with good mobility, and you wouldn’t even call mobility a role. You’d have a mobile member of the team who can perform time-sensitive tasks such as rushing to maintain a cap because they are faster than those who can hold it effectively for a worthwhile period of time, and that would be an added responsibility or aspect of their role, which is chiefly something else. It’s bad practice to take someone to perform a role which you cannot be sure will even be needed, but good practice to take someone who can perform such a role - perhaps not the best at it - in addition to performing a role you know for certain will be needed.

Taking someone purely to "+1" might equate to making it a 4v5 in your opponent’s favour. That being said, the ability of a thief to +1 fights quickly is a large part of why they are still in the meta, and is the mark of a bad design, or, more accurately neglect over numerous balance patches.

Insta-cast and on-hit-triggered offensive effects were complained about a lot before the patch. So it’s perfectly fair for there to be anger at not just the fact there are still such sigils, traits, skills, but that more have been added. It’s an outrage really, lol.

Because Shadow Shot doesn’t count as #3, or as porting.
Because Black Powder->Heartseeker isn’t repetitive at all.
Because sword builds can "spam" 3 while "constantly" pressing 2.
Because having Dancing Dagger - a ranged attack - on a melee set that bounces to targets even in stealth isn’t awesome.

Didn’t read so sorry if repeats.

- Bombs in bomb kit that say 180 radius are 180 radius, but the graphic effect covers 240 radius.
- When swapping from 1 kit to another, the auto attack for the equipped weapon (rifle/pistol) is fired while wielding the new kit.
- Mortar kit #4 applies blind/pulses once every 2 seconds while the tooltip states once every 1 second.
- Siege Rounds trait makes mortar kit #4 refresh once the extended duration of 6 seconds ends, resulting in the impact animation occurring a second time, and the total duration being 12 seconds.

I like it. Granted, I’ve not had the chance to try it out properly yet, but there are going to be times when I am saved by it. Quite often in the past, I’ve needed to use Steal defensively due to eating a cc, but hadn’t used the stolen item yet so couldn’t. This change will enable me to do so. It removes pressure to use the skill before the opportune moment in order to have Steal available.

I think that was the main one that was removed in order to add counter play. Heartseeker is D/P’s most telegraphed skill, and telegraphed skills create windows for players to land important skills of their own, such as a crowd control effect or a high hitting telegraphed skill. Immobilize falls under the category of crowd control, along with the obvious disabling effects. If, 90% of the time, Heartseeker is performed in Black Powder, it will instantly remove immobilize, removing that counter play. Other movement impairing effects could also be viewed in this light, but of course with less importance.

The problem is that it also removes this element of counter play against immobilize for the thief. For example, a thief can no longer place Black Powder in anticipation of an immobilize, and wait for it before using Heartseeker in the same way S/D would create Infiltrator’s Return and wait. Maybe the devs thought it was more important that immobilize be landed on a D/P thief because they have the ability to stack stealth while in stealth, and to try to compensate for the anticipated Shadow’s Rejuvenation builds.

It should still remove a condition upon entering stealth. Was this announced in the patch notes? If not it might be a bug. As for limiting it to damaging conditions, it’s also a buff in some cases, such as removing those 10 bleeds instead of the 2 vulnerability.

Yes, ish. Base is 30s, 15% reduced takes it to 30s*0.85=25.5s, and then Sleight of hand takes it to 25.5s*0.8=20.4s. It doesn’t stack like damage modifiers, so it’s not 15%*20%=38% reduction, and each successive percentage doesn’t use the original cool down value either, so it doesn’t equal 15+20%=35% reduction. The tool tip actually shows 20 3/4 instead of 20 1/2, because for some reason, the 15% reduction takes it to 26s instead of 25.5, resulting in the 20% reduction then taking it down to 20.8s, and the tooltips round to the nearest 1/4, 1/5, and 3/4 second.

You probably didn’t re-select your Trickery trait line after logging in after the patch. The minors automatically activate when the trait line is "selected". The patch automatically set your trait lines for you to replace your previous build, but because they are not "selected," the minors do not activate. It’s a bug. Just deselect the trait line by selecting another one that is not in either of the other two slots, then re-select Trickery, and your minors will be activated. Do this for each trait line. You don’t have to do it each time you log in, just once after the patch.

I managed to stack 23mins of it. When it got to 22mins 58secs, it kept going 22m 58s to 22m 57s back up to 22m 58s, then after a while jumped down to 19m something.

When I was doing it, the elementalist(s) maintained the permanent fury and might for the group. It’s true regarding Keen Observer and Side Strike though. Plus, there’s also the fact you can mod ascended gear with precise infusions which, combined with the two traits should raise it to 100%. I mained ele at the time, and got into PvP around the time ascended gear came out, which was when I changed mains from ele to thief. For ele, finding the mix that got you as close to the 100% mark so as to keep "wasted stat points" to a minimum (to be used on power) was more complicated, and it truly was a mix - may even still be. Still, I did say "the gear mix will likely be the same," whether I have its current state right or wrong, the main point was that it will likely stay the same, because those keeping up with it will know what is current.

Yeah... The reason people use "zerker" is because it’s easy to type - 2x occurrence of "er." "Rauder" isn’t as simple, and being lazy, people will just use "mara," as they do "cele" and "valk."

All classes should be mid-tier for health, removing the tiers entirely. It’s unfair when you also factor in armour differences. Only ranger and engineer are balanced in this regard: medium armour and middle health tier. If this tier system is to persist, it should be properly balanced. A simple balance proposal might be heavy armour in the low tier, medium armour in the middle tier, and light armour in the high tier. However, even this would be unbalanced because ele is always played in PvP as a high sustain class, and it’s now got a lot more health than warrior and guardian. Therefore, the best balance is to have every class have the same base health.

Terra.8571:

Impact.2780:

With gear and base stats receiving some buffs to make up for the removal of stats from trait lines, the gear mix will likely be the same - a mix of ascended assassin’s and berserker’s to optimize the offensive stats, of course factoring in consumables. Upgrades as far as we know will remain the same.

As for the traits it’s pretty obvious. Both offensive lines, and Trickery because it’s the only trait line besides Deadly Arts that kept its increased damage modifier minor trait. I imagine it’d be something like this: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-g33;2ZwVb0K5N-kd0;9;4IJM;0158246146H

If you trait mug (which is a toss up between the dagger poison, need to see if perma weakness helps at all), having the 2k heal on a 19.5s cd is kinda a no brainer and thus taking the 20% steal reduc trait is best. 3 init every 10s is kinda meh and if this was the old tree we’d just stop at lead attacks ;p.

With regards to gear, thieves don’t need assassins gear in pve, full zerker and agility signet gets them to 62% base. 5% from hp >90% trait then fury = 20% gets them to 87%. They use to take 7% from side strike but flawless power is too good now. Still that’s 87% crit rate and with food you’re into the 90’s (was almost 100 with side strike). Even with the changes, because fury is permanent (watch some of the twitch streams - guy stacked minutes of fury!) it makes assasin’s gear even more redundant for thieves. For those who did want 100% or near enough, slot precise infusions instead of power.

High weakness up-time isn’t all that good in PvE. A year ago when I was actually interested in this gear/DPS optimising for speed runs, I read a lot of threads, and did a lot of maths. There comes a point, with berserker’s, when assassin’s becomes more optimal because precision becomes worth more than power. This is due to power from a particular food, and bloodlust stacks increasing power, and the berserker’s gear also increasing precision and ferocity.

With gear and base stats receiving some buffs to make up for the removal of stats from trait lines, the gear mix will likely be the same - a mix of ascended assassin’s and berserker’s to optimize the offensive stats, of course factoring in consumables. Upgrades as far as we know will remain the same.

As for the traits it’s pretty obvious. Both offensive lines, and Trickery because it’s the only trait line besides Deadly Arts that kept its increased damage modifier minor trait. I imagine it’d be something like this: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-g33;2ZwVb0K5N-kd0;9;4IJM;0158246146H