Guild Wars 2

Zach.3264:

Jekkt.6045:

Still a bad excuse as thief’s signet of malice is 110/hit and ele’s signet is ~200 per cast. Guess what, their active heals suck too but HS is still better…

Here’s the problem with that.
Warrior Signet heals constantly, yes there’s no denying it’s powerful.

Though, Elementalists also get several healing abilities on their weapon sets (every one).
Thieves also get stealth which gives them free time for their CD on heal to go down. Not only that, but in my opinion.. majority of Thieves run 30 points in Shadow Arts. Which cleanes conditions in stealth, procs regen AND heals passively in stealth.

I crafted my Thief to 80, I had maybe 8 hours playtime on it by the time I hit 80. I grabbed a full berserker set and went straight to WvW. Within 2 hours I had it nailed. Since then I’ve still barely died. They have plenty of escape and the survivbility stealth provides with 30 points in Shadow Arts is unreal.

So, in my opinion.. Warrior heal is fairly balanced.

Warrior heal is not balanced at all. It would be if the signet healed for 250/s. Warriors have reliable cleanses blocks and stances. In pvp nobody ever runs 30 in sa as stealth is completely useless…

Still a bad excuse as thief’s signet of malice is 110/hit and ele’s signet is ~200 per cast. Guess what, their active heals suck too but HS is still better…

power specs dont even bother me anymore on my bunker guardian. i stocked up on hitpoints and 3x condi removal utils with 40% crit chance and on crit condi transfers. fought 2 necros 1 cond warrior and 1 cond engi last match. was hell of a condfest but you know what? i was able to cleanse ‘almost’ all the conditions. its funny when a meta forces you to play in a certain way…

i modified my bunker guardian a bit. with all the conditions flying around i felt like 15,5k hp were not enough so i picked up the magi amulet, dropped the virtues traitline and switched to altruistic healing. 22k hp 2500 (before 2800) armor and 43% crit chance so i dont need the sigils of intelligence work pretty good.

currently im rank 67 (pre 50) and right now im in a tpvp group with rank 20-40. sometimes its frustrating but if you explain them stuff (and carry them a bit too) it works better than you would expect. we managed to defeat some stronger enemy groups and it really surprised me^^

i think there is toxity because of all those crap meta builds you have to deal with day in and day out. yelling at low levels is maybe just a way to let off some steam. but what i dont like is when low level players dont listen and think they can do everything better on their own.

maybe its a bit early to say this but it feels like the meta is even worse than before

cond spam engi with balthazar runes is a bad joke. fought one with my cleanse-them-all ele and still died. in that fight i recieved 42k burning damage and some other condition damage.

decap engi 2.0 with turrets. knocks you off point with thumper or simply detonating any turret while recieving all the boons from the new grandmaster. low hp? np make a water field and detonate them all =>full hp

necro with nightmare runes. not much to say here, you can fear certain classes from 100 to 0 hp.

hambow still as strong as before. nerf the stun damage by 5%? np runes of strength make up for that.

condition warrior. condition burst and you’re down in no time.

spirit rangers still as forgiving. i still see a lot of pew pew spam shortbow 1 spirit rangers that still do decent although they suck. player skill helps against bad spirit rangers but against good ones? and if the ranger dies he can simply use the elite spirit on himself if he’s got the timing right. why should you be able to res yourself in an instant?

minion mancer. minions deal too much damage while the player himself doesnt have to do much and is tanky. fix immobilize stacking… minions block attacks/projectiles and mess with AoE

all in all there is more condition spam after this balance patch which is very bad imo. im not touching my thief anymore because i simply cant cleanse anything on that class. even on my ele i cant cleanse the conditions fast enough although i run tripple cantrips + regen + cleanse on regen and regen when critical hit + water skills.

with the nerf to lyssa runes there will be no “counterbuilds”. blathazar engis, nightmare necros and spirit rangers are all horrible.

welcome back to the condition meta

no its not and its even worse now lol. turret decap with waterfields blast finisher and insta full heal
detonating turrets throws you out of the capture point.

AR wasnt the problem at all. its the healing capabilities that engi can achieve with cleric.

play engi, necro or hambow for that extra cheese against ele.

especially bathazar engi, fear nightmare necro, strength hambow war.

sustain ele is back. but hambow still kills it no matter what you do. equal damage, more regen more hp more armor :/ just the ele mobility is superior

most concerns about warriors

had to fight some in my last matches with my ele. no chance, cant kill them at all and i was even using sigil of doom to cut the healing signet. 15+ might stacks hitting me 3,5k with hammer and them burn ticks…

nerf my kitten

let the meta settle! well whatever – there are some things i noticed after the patch:

engis: obv strongest condition class now

hambows: still as strong as ever except maybe longbow #3

thieves: more vulnerable due to lyssa nerf. pw is still beeing spammed. the ini increase was a bad change to begin with.

necro: people went from dumbfire to dumbfear

guardians: didnt notice anything yet

rangers: not much either except the lower amount of hp/s with spirit elite. heard pets hit for 9k though

mesmers: got hit by a mesmer like a truck.. not sure if that’s got anything to do with the patch.

eles: not bad right now. revived my old d/d ele and been doing great in hotjoins / tdm / solo q. good sustain and healing with celestial.

did you notice any other differences? then post it please

Would like axes and maces. And offhand sword ofc for block/parry and that double sword X slash

1. - other dps classes need small buffs to make them equal, power necro, sd engi. thieves are more mobile and more “slippery” but thats class design. i dont see why this should get nerfed.

1. thief cooldown is initiative. if you interrupt a skill thieves loose the initiative. c&d = 5 sec of wasted initiative. interrupting a d/p thief at the right moment can be way more punishing than interrupting whatever other class.

thief skills are balanced around the “spamming”. eviscerate for example has a higher power coefficient than backstab. 9 sec cooldown vs ~5 sec cooldown and positioning.

1. its not like other classes cant spam auto attacks do break aegis… reveal is when dealing damage. you dont deal any damage why should you be revealed.

if you want to ruin another class keep posting stuff like that. if you want to nerf stealth give me protection stability and better condition cleansing out of stealth.

make it the same way as in PvE. bosses get stun immunity stacks. if you get stunned/dazed whatever you get 1 stack for 10 seconds = problem solved.
you either waste another stun to remove that stack or you wait 10 seconds.

there are hundres of threads like this one and im sure it wont be the last one. nothing has been done and nothing will ever be done if the balance team doesnt change broken things.

the new traits wont change much either..

this is the worst meta ever. well i thought that about the last one too but i didnt expect it to get worse lol…

things that have to be addressed the most are:

eles, insane burst, no survivability
warrior tankyness with too much damage output
condition spam, conditions on autoattack pls?
amount of stuns in the game
passive procs of any sort
AI clutter, mesmers clones, MM, sprits

and im sure there’s even more

its all a matter of practice. get accustomed to your skills / keybinds and you will be able to play without looking at your UI (except hp) and fully pay attention to your opponent.

knowing all class mechanics, skills and skill animations helps a ton too.

there is no lower crit damage in pvp as far as i know. and i dont think that the meta will shift that much anyway.

the change to amulets is just so wrong.. it should be the exact opposite:

give us amulets with jewels, rings and accessoires so we can build more complex builds instead of having just that one amulet with that one set of stats. it should’ve been like that from the start.

making complex decisions for new players more easy is a bad excuse. if you’re not even smart enough to mix some stats you shouldn’t play pvp at all…

hm yeah i can see the reasoning behind it being a duo skill and i do agree with that. nonetheless people keep complaining about the stun. moving the main damage to the last hits wont do the job i think because pw is very strong in combination with quickness and wouldnt make much of a difference that way (although i wouldnt have a problem with it). another problem is that i dont know if arenanet would invest the time to rework the skill animation to a unload+blurred frenzy mix.

do you seriously think that the evade is a bug which is in the game for 1,5 years? when stuff like fury on instinctual response gets patched after a short time? but yes they should update the description to include the 1,2s evade window.

i didnt make an irrational comment. the time window will still exist because the actual flurry takes 1,25 seconds and the whole skill is 2 seconds + human reaction + ping to cast the next skill.

Teutos.8620:

How about removing the option to port after the opponents player during the pistol whip effect with skills like steal, signet of shadow and even shadowstep?

wont work as you can teleport before casting it and then just get it off.

Mike.4830:

So if I do this 5 times in a row on a down body I will do 20k+ damage while evading for 10s without a non evade frame…….. the stun makes pw less effective because you can land attacks as well as interrupt the attack during the stun frame…. without it this skill will become a stronger spamable version of blurred frenzy. Backpack.out

the vulnerable spot of pw isnt the window between the stun and the flurry but the aftercast. after the flurry the thief kinda “calms down” which is the aftercast. thats when s/p gets vulnerable and that time window will still remain.

and without the stun pw is less of a ress-killer as you can perm stun ressing people to death which wont be able without the stun: you either waste your ini on pw or on headshot.

You cant remove the evade or the whole spec will just be dead. If i want to play a yolo stunlock build without evades i can go and play a m/s+ham warrior, mr silentnight warrior.

Definitely! Thats why ptr servers would be awesome

If + pw is working now aswell it wouldnt change much but to reliably land a pw after the removal of the stun would cost that extra ini.

I dont intend to make pw really hard to hit. It doesnt matter if you get “pistolwhiplocked” but i want players to be able to counterplay. Getting stunned every 2s is bad for counterplay. Immob allowes counterplay and inf strike is not that spammable in combination with pw.

And the spam auto till strong attack was always like that. You dont evade but you interrupt it.

As for how pw would work; like the mesmer sword #2. Maybe a 1/4 precast.

Silly me.. i always thought it was to evade all the tartar

Removing the first part of the skill woulf allow for more combinations than just spamming 3. Is + pw for example. Or the already existing port + pw. And there would still be a wind up. The whole flurry duration is about 1,5s with the according 0.5s pre or aftercast.

I have no clue why you think its a damage increase of 50%. There is no increase of the damage at all. The skill will be 33% shorter but the damage will remain the same. The ini reduction is because you lose the stun. Without the stun you can just walk out of the skill. Overall pw will be less spamable because you regain less ini if the skill only lasts for 2s instead of 3s.

A faster skill is also less powerful against blocks.

Please do the maths before complaining

Hello, my name is inflambio and i play my thief since headstart.
I have a little bit over 1500 hours of thief playtime and im active for about half a year in the pvp scene with a current rank of 45.

In my gw2 time i played every possible (and serious) thief spec. I started as a d/d thief switched to d/p, s/d and after the announcement of the s/d nerf i play s/p (before it became “meta”).

S/p is currently very strong because it allowes you to lock your enemy down while evading and dealing decent damage. The stun is effective against classes with no stability like necro or other thieves and less effective but still decent against classes with a good amount of stability uptime.

Thief took many nerfs since headstart and simply nerfing pistol whip to the ground wont do the job as people would just move on with one viable build less, create a new “meta build” and the complaining would start again cuz teef.

There are 3 ways to change PW.
Remove the evade, the stun or split the skill.
Removing the evade would kill the spec, and splitting would cause more button mashing for the bigger part of the sp players.

So lets remove the stun. Not just the stun itself but also that first hit.
The damage of the first hit would be distributed to the 8 flurry slashes.

With the new ini regeneration rate of 1/s a thief can regenerate 3 ini per pw (pre cast 0.75s and pw 2.2s = ~3seconds, data taken from the wiki) which is a regeneration of 3/5 pw per pw cast.

After removing the stun on pw the ini cost should be reduced from 5 to 4. Without the casting time and the stun the duration of the flurry would be about 1.5seconds. Lets round it up to 2. Thats 1/2 pw regeneration per pistol whip, less than 3/5

Last but not least: make any weapon skill you cast cancel pistol whip. Without the stun on the first hit you cant “lucky stun” an opponent when he tries to cast his heal. With said canceling and a good reaction time you could still prevent that heal with headshot which would be another ini loss for the thief than just simply casting another pw and would involve a bit more skillful playing.

Those 3 changes would be less punishing for stabilityless classes but would allow a thief to do faster bursts because of the shorter pw duration which can be counterplayed.

Tldr:
- remove the stun part. Just flurry. Damage will stay the same. Skill duration from 3s to 2s.
- Ini cost down to 4. Overall less ini regen per pistol whip.
- other weapons cancel pw to allow headshot in midpistolwhip for that interrupt.

Thanks for your time and post constructive feedback if you want to

Hello, my name is inflambio and i play my thief since headstart.
I have a little bit over 1500 hours of thief playtime and im active for about half a year in the pvp scene with a current rank of 45.

In my gw2 time i played every possible (and serious) thief spec. I started as a d/d thief switched to d/p, s/d and after the announcement of the s/d nerf i play s/p (before it became “meta”).

S/p is currently very strong because it allowes you to lock your enemy down while evading and dealing decent damage. The stun is effective against classes with no stability like necro or other thieves and less effective but still decent against classes with a good amount of stability uptime.

Thief took many nerfs since headstart and simply nerfing pistol whip to the ground wont do the job as people would just move on with one viable build less, create a new “meta build” and the complaining would start again cuz teef.

There are 3 ways to change PW.
Remove the evade, the stun or split the skill.
Removing the evade would kill the spec, and splitting would cause more button mashing for the bigger part of the sp players.

So lets remove the stun. Not just the stun itself but also that first hit.
The damage of the first hit would be distributed to the 8 flurry slashes.

With the new ini regeneration rate of 1/s a thief can regenerate 3 ini per pw (pre cast 0.75s and pw 2.2s = ~3seconds, data taken from the wiki) which is a regeneration of 3/5 pw per pw cast.

After removing the stun on pw the ini cost should be reduced from 5 to 4. Without the casting time and the stun the duration of the flurry would be about 1.5seconds. Lets round it up to 2. Thats 1/2 pw regeneration per pistol whip, less than 3/5

Last but not least: make any weapon skill you cast cancel pistol whip. Without the stun on the first hit you cant “lucky stun” an opponent when he tries to cast his heal. With said canceling and a good reaction time you could still prevent that heal with headshot which would be another ini loss for the thief than just simply casting another pw and would involve a bit more skillful playing.

Those 3 changes would be less punishing for stabilityless classes but would allow a thief to do faster bursts because of the shorter pw duration which can be counterplayed.

Tldr:
- remove the stun part. Just flurry. Damage will stay the same. Skill duration from 3s to 2s.
- Ini cost down to 4. Overall less ini regen per pistol whip.
- other weapons cancel pw to allow headshot in midpistolwhip for that interrupt.

Thanks for your time and post constructive feedback if you want to

Hello, my name is inflambio and i play my thief since headstart.
I have a little bit over 1500 hours of thief playtime and im active for about half a year in the pvp scene with a current rank of 45.

In my gw2 time i played every possible (and serious) thief spec. I started as a d/d thief switched to d/p, s/d and after the announcement of the s/d nerf i play s/p (before it became “meta”).

S/p is currently very strong because it allowes you to lock your enemy down while evading and dealing decent damage. The stun is effective against classes with no stability like necro or other thieves and less effective but still decent against classes with a good amount of stability uptime.

Thief took many nerfs since headstart and simply nerfing pistol whip to the ground wont do the job as people would just move on with one viable build less, create a new “meta build” and the complaining would start again cuz teef.

There are 3 ways to change PW.
Remove the evade, the stun or split the skill.
Removing the evade would kill the spec, and splitting would cause more button mashing for the bigger part of the sp players.

So lets remove the stun. Not just the stun itself but also that first hit.
The damage of the first hit would be distributed to the 8 flurry slashes.

With the new ini regeneration rate of 1/s a thief can regenerate 3 ini per pw (pre cast 0.75s and pw 2.2s = ~3seconds, data taken from the wiki) which is a regeneration of 3/5 pw per pw cast.

After removing the stun on pw the ini cost should be reduced from 5 to 4. Without the casting time and the stun the duration of the flurry would be about 1.5seconds. Lets round it up to 2. Thats 1/2 pw regeneration per pistol whip, less than 3/5

Last but not least: make any weapon skill you cast cancel pistol whip. Without the stun on the first hit you cant “lucky stun” an opponent when he tries to cast his heal. With said canceling and a good reaction time you could still prevent that heal with headshot which would be another ini loss for the thief than just simply casting another pw and would involve a bit more skillful playing.

Those 3 changes would be less punishing for stabilityless classes but would allow a thief to do faster bursts because of the shorter pw duration which can be counterplayed.

Tldr:
- remove the stun part. Just flurry. Damage will stay the same. Skill duration from 3s to 2s.
- Ini cost down to 4. Overall less ini regen per pistol whip.
- other weapons cancel pw to allow headshot in midpistolwhip for that interrupt.

Thanks for your time and post constructive feedback if you want to

but hey, at least a thief nerf which nobody cares about

that format should’ve been in the game on start tbh…

after watching some gw2 tournament vids i stumbled upon a gw1 factions championship video from 2006. i watched it and i really wondered if i am playing the sequel to that game…

especially the match starting at 20:15 blew my mind.

if a weapon set encourages you to spam the auto attack over the actual skills something is wrong. getting as many spirit procs and bleeds from behind is the problem. the melee weapons however are just used to evade attacks. not to deal actual damage.

3-5k crits with a stun/knockdown chain is, imo, not acceptable. not every class has access to stability and you cant dodge all the hammer hits. the problem with decap is that there’s no risk involved. you dont have to do any damage you just have to decap the point and stay alive. and the engi does that job too well. very often close bunkers are cond specs, ranger, p/s engi, necros. paired with AR it is way too overpowered.

pistol whip is a different thing. all other s/p skills are too bad compared to pistol whip. why would you use an autoattack which leaves you vulnerable to aoe/damage if you have 15k hp and could use a stun+evade which deals almost as much damage as the auto chain. #2 #4 and #5 are not for damage but utility.

Chuck Zitto.2367:

Pretty much spot on and addresses most the cheese as you call it builds in spvp. Not sure about ele burst though. In wvw I do ok burst but in spvp even with zerker I don’t do that much then have long cooldowns and a low healthpool and no armor to make up for that meh burst I have. Pretty sure a warrior with zerker amulet auto attacking with hammer will out damage ele burst and still be very tanky due to heavy armor and high hp.

thats exactly why i think ele needs more sustain with less cooldowns and better survivability. d/d ele pre-nerf was pretty much like that. long lasting and not too bursty. s/d when timed well can instakill you.

thanks for your feedback!

ah and i forgot the good old AR and diamond skin passives will add

the balance of the game is getting worse with every patch and the devs arent doing anything… sometimes i wonder if we play the same game…

for the sake of pvp… reduce the kitten cheese…

for clarification: i play since headstart and i play all the classes. this is not a “nerf that because i died against it” thread.

things that need to be looked at:

warrior:

- combination of healing skills and traits. simply “shaving” healing signet by 8% wont do the job…

- make hammer a damage weapon or make it a cc weapon… even after the last hammer nerf i get hit by 4-5k hammer knockdowns on certain classes using certain specs.. and even on my bunker guard its not that much less…

- longbow f1 aoe with 3 bars of adrenaline shouldnt be able to fill the full circle of a point..

- impale, currently keeps stacking torment even if you use a condition cleanse. needs to be changed to stop stacking when you use a cleanse. i know the sword is sticking out of the target and therefor keeps stacking torment but it just makes cond cleanses useless..

necro:

- marks, make a symbol appear over the necro when he starts casting a mark
- pets: reduce the damage they deal and (maybe increase their hp in pvp to compensate.)

- dhuumfire, is getting changes anyway.

*ranger: *

- shortbow 1, add an aftercast. a lot of rangers are simply spamming their #1 button and still do decent…

spirits: change the passive effects. spirits should give “charges” similar to mantras and venoms when summoned and activated.

thief:

- remove the stun on pistol whip. either make it cripple or remove the whole first part of the skill and just leave the flurry.

mesmer:

- prismatic understanding (not so much a problem in pvp but in wvw) increase the interval to 3 seconds.

guardian:

not so sure on that one because it actually doesnt harm anyone but is still kinda op in some ways…

engi:

- decap, more of a game mode problem as it would be useless in a deathmatch mode. maybe increase the cooldown of knockbacks.

- aoe “condition spam” increase the cooldowns (bombs, nades)

- incendiary powder has to be removed. passives simply have to go..

- AR a broken passive. needs to go.
eles:

- burst hast to be toned down and sustained damage has to be adjusted. survivability of eles have to be increased aswell, maybe an increase of the base health. eles were in a way better state before the nerfs and probably not even op in the current meta.

- diamond skin. although the 10% of an ele’s health isnt much its just a stupid passive…

please leave constructive feedback.

after a 1,5 months break i feel like the meta is even worse than before… there ist just too much spam right now

- too much stun spam: hamwar, pistol whip
- too much aoe cond: longbow wars, necros, engis
- knockback decap insanity….
- too much AI
- too much screen clutter
- too much passiveplay
- too much immob stacking
and i feel like the pvp community has gotten smaller… i have to wait between 5 and 10 mins to find a match.. just to get matched with r65 and r70 players..

cmon balance team its time to do something

main thief 1500 hours

nerf pistol whip and you will break the whole weaponset:
remove the stun and you will be forced to use immobs like the venom,
remove the evade and you will get facesmashed while you’re rooted,
nerf the damage and, meh, its already low compared to before…

when i play s/p a lot of people start flaming and tell me to “gtfo 333333333”
the problem with the whole 333333333333 thing is that there’s no other skill worth to be used if there’s no special situation calling for #4 or #5.

never been killed in a 1vs1 against a thief on my ranger. i run s/d + a/t with conditions. the hardest matches ended in a draw when the thief decided to leave. i have 102 hours of playtime on my ranger and i dont think of myself as an easy kill.

on the other hand when i play on my thief and i have to face 2 enemies of which one is a ranger with a longbow i target the ranger first simply because most lb rangers are berserk and hit 8k #2 and 3k #1.

im not looking forward to this change. as you say it would just lead to people spamming the 3 skill because they dont want to lose time between the stun and the flurry.

pistol whip is in a good spot right now. if they want to change something they should either revert the damage nerf or lower the after cast again.

i wonder why everybody thinks critical damage will get nerfed. “changes to critical damage” doesnt necessarily mean that they will nerf it.

the problem right now is that nobody uses conditions for PvE because they’re too weak.
if they nerf the crit damage conditions would (in PvP) be too strong.

a possibility would be that they add a cap, maybe 50% maybe 75% whatever and make critical damage (and precision) also work for conditions.

they were also talking about new stat combo amulets in sPvP, maybe they add some condition damage, critical hit chance, critical damage amulets?

that way they could lower the usefulness of berserker a bit in PvE and at the same time bring the condition damage on par. there would still be the problem with the condition stack limit on monsters.

indeed. it just kills the purpose of being a warrior right?

s/p is getting more popular aswell. personally i have more seccess using s/p over s/d. d/p is an alternative if you dont like the sword.

no its not. they should just give us our useless venom skills as f-skills with 1 charge and cooldown reduced to 20 seconds.

stats (except hitpoints) in pvp are already lower and crit damage is capped. i dont see your point.

i lately play s/p in spvp and depending on the player skill there are some classes that can give me trouble.

-engis with grenade and bomb cond spam if i cant manage to burst kill them

-necros when i fail to stunlock them, terror and burns hit like a truck. tanky mm builds can be hard aswell sometimes.

-warriors if they use both stances, cond warrior is even worse

-s/d ele if i somehow fail to avoid their burst

-power guards with greatsword, retaliation

-spirit rangers because of evades + protection. you cant stun or entangle them if they run certain traits.

-pu mesmers because of the blinks, stealth and phase retreat. impossible to stun or entangle them.

more or less all the meta builds. i guess thats why they’re called meta, because they’re effective.