Guild Wars 2

About the patch(my opinion highlighted):

• Vital Shot: Reduced the aftercast delay of this skill by 0.6 seconds. Great!
• Body Shot: Reduced the aftercast delay of this skill by 0.16 seconds. doesn’t matter, it is terrible either way
• Unload: This skill now grants 1 stack of might for 8 seconds when striking an enemy. yes, this skill needed more powercreep… nope. It remains a spam skill.
• Heartseeker: This skill is now able to be affected by quickness and slow. good
• Weakening Charge: This skill is now able to be affected by quickness and slow. good
• Dust Strike: This skill now applies 5 stacks of vulnerability per hit. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to strike more than once. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to blind for only 3 seconds instead of the full 5 seconds. bugfix, vuln good. blind should have stayed 3s
• Larcenous Strike: The number of boons stolen by this skill has been increased from 1 to 2. The initiative cost has been increased from 1 to 2. Great, albeit initiative cost could have stayed 1 and S/D would be still way underpowered.
• Withdraw: This skill now removes torment in addition to its other removals. ok
• Hide in Shadows: This skill now removes confusion in addition to its other removals. Increased the duration of regeneration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds. ok
• Skelk Venom: The base healing modifier for venom strikes has been increased by 40%. The healing contribution for both the initial heal and venom strikes has been increased by 50%. ok
• Expeditious Dodger: Increased the swiftness duration from 4 seconds to 6 seconds. Time could have been spent better but better than nothing. If changed, IMO, it should have been swapped for “1.5s superspeed on shadowstep” to better differentiate the acro and daredeveil traitlines and to make it fun.
• Pain Response: The internal cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 20 seconds to 16 seconds. It was ok at 20s but any help is good for acro.. The variety of cleansed condis could have been improved and it should only proc if you have a condi. The most passive traits are the closest to viable in acro and there is too many of them.
• Vigorous Recovery: Increased the vigor duration of this trait from 7 seconds to 10 seconds. This trait wouldn’t be any better if it was 9999s vigor, and should be removed, there is already infinite vigor from the minor.
• Swindler’s Equilibrium: Damage while wielding a sword has been increased from 5% to 7%. Shouldn’t make this profession any more steal-centered than it already is. Whether u can land it or not, already decides the outcome of most duels.
  7% dmg that you don’t get on your shortbow is too low and situational. BTW, adding 2% dmg won’t help a traitline that is so far behind the others.
• Lead Attacks: This trait has been reworked and now grants 1% damage and condition damage per initiative spent for 15 seconds. This effect has a maximum of 15%. * Should reduce duration to 7s. Adding condi dmg to it is a great idea and generally a lot more traits should give condi dmg as well. Lead attacks is now also more potent but it should have been left as powerful as it was.*
• Bountiful Theft: The number of boons stolen has been increased from 2 to 3 in addition to applying vigor. Unnecessary buff of a meta trait.
• Consume Plasma: This stolen ability now grants resistance for 2.5 seconds, but it will not apply quickness. Updated the skill facts. ok
• Throw Gunk: This skill is now ground targeted. Added the radius to this skill’s description. Added an allied combo-field effect and enemy ring effect to this skill. “ground targeted” would only be a good thing if the skill actually dealt any damage

A lot more could have been done and instead of focusing on the meta Trickery traits, weak Acro traits could have been buffed. The main problem with these changes are not the things have been changed but the ones that haven’t been.
If condi mes, rev and druid descended to the balanced level, thief(D/P, Staff) could be in a good spot. My post is more about thief diversity for the most part which isn’t in a good spot.

lol it seems someone only read the title in the balance team. What about giving this skill a visible animation like http://9gag.com/gag/aRAy5NA
That u can see from the beginning of the cast.
And not tracking stealthed people behind you.

Now that larcenous strike’s key component is boon stealing again:
On thief I tested it with Larcenous strike and 30% boon duration didn’t increase received duration at all.
It is coded to steal the current time left of a boon so it can apply a 0.5s fury to you for example.
Please make it more like Bountiful Theft in that it normalizes boon duration so you don’t steal half a sec of something or an hour long aegis and you benefit from boon duration. The only problem with bountiful is it ignores the might stacks and you steal 1 stack of might even if your target had 12. LS currently steals stacks properly.

LS description is incorrect, it still says it only steals 1 boon.

This isnt very accurate.
Blood is fine, although all the things with leeching buff effect that applies on your next hit doesnt deal dmg(vampirism runes, sigil of leeching) but still heal you

it must be mid-air immob bug. immob makes you stuck in the air, where you can’t dodge.

@Blaque if you port while dodging you can get stick regardless of the type of dodge roll u use. It is about timing.

This map is so full of bugs you should have just built a new one from scratch.Teleport doesn’t work, you can build life force by hitting the floor, jump pads are very clunky. I even liked the idea of pulling ppl down for a hotjoin map(well, I know most ppl didn’t so the best place for it would be a mini game with preset push, pull and stealth skills) but now it is gonna be both uninteresting and bad. If I were arenanet, I’d do a lot of ingame polls to find out what the community really wants. If all the bugs I mentioned are fixed tho it could be good but I highly doubt it happened.

Edit: it turned out better than expected. Still haven’t tested it against all bugs but it seems decent.

@Set good point about revealed training. Res trait should be optional either way.

@Misa thx for feedback again, although vault dmg could be still good after nerf and don’t forget vault does 3 other things in addition but dmg as of now is kittened. There are also CCs and general clusterf* to help u land it and is the best way to cleave downed bodies
Dagger auto DPS would be more than enough, trust me. I’m just suggesting some shaving.
Improv is not problematic on the user’s side but it is unfair against the opponent who tries to count your CDs. Doubling up on heal is also op.
Trickster: it felt it could take a little buff cause currently you have to turn down on bountiful theft.
Making +3 init baseline is something 90% of ppl agree on, in my experience.
Shadow’s rejuvenation could be still too strong I give you that, but only the numbers need some fine-tuning.
Crit strikes: could keep the cripple proc on the pistol trait but what I’m saying is dmg vs crippled doesn’t make sense because this proc is the only thing that gives cripple on pistol.
I agree on how weird the"condi sets" are and there should be clear condi sets and power sets instead of some random condi’s here and there

The best way to improve the skill would be to leave them as leap skills but let us stow them any time or dodgeroll during cast. This would be different that current movement skills but still.

The best way to improve it would be to leave them as leap skills but let is stow them any time or dodgeroll during cast. This would be different that current movement skills but still.

yep there should be a limited number of legendaries. and rank1 legendaries should not play against rank 10 legendaries

The best way to improve it would be to leave them as leap skill sbut let is stow them any time or dodgeroll during cast. It is great improvement for any fast paced combat as you now can use your evades any time. You will also be able to use it on stealthed foes instead of leaping through them. The only fun thing about this skill was that if you hit someone once you can clear target and kite away using the leap auto twice in the air.

Silverbolt, you got me. Well if vault’s so effortless to dodge anyway they should increase its damage tenfold after all.

Thanks for the positive feedback, Misa.
However, I didn’t suggest to lower the initiative on Headshot, on the contrary, it is op combined with Impacting Disruption but it is easier to fix the trait.

Pistol Whip: if it was split into a chain it, the opponent would still want to evade the stun as you would be able to use the skill as it currently functions but the skill would be a lot more flexible.
Making infiltrator’s strike a bit faster wouldn’t be bad but it’s already a great skill imo.

At the same time, Scythe staff for example is still 6000g. So probably not a duplication bug.

That doesn’t make sense. Why would they sell it for a few gold all of the sudden when it was that expensive? Why is there 20x more of these skins on TP than it has EVER been?

vital shot extra dmg and changing body shot to a defensive skill is what p/p needs, like I said in my thread below.

“Search and Rescue: 1200 range, instant cast, 45 sec CD, speed of dual resser, ignores LoS”
It has 36s cd because it is always traited. Don’t forget it needs no target, can be used ~10s before anyone even goes down(so the effective CD can go down to 26s). And it not only ignores LoS but also the terrain completely. The pets teleports to allies even below the texture or on top of mini jumping puzzles to res them. And instant cast also means u can’t prevent it by CCing the ranger.

I’ve seen a suggestion about making eviscerate go through blinds. Maybe they were playing around making it unblockable and unmissable. Although, makingt it unevadable was unintended.

Mist champions in other maps?
For example Spirit Watch could be refined to integrate heroes into the orb mechanics.
If you finish the channel rather than getting the orb you summon your selected hero to carry the orb back to your home point. If the hero dies, the orb returns to it’s original spawn location/disappears.
Another thing I would change in Spirit Watch is to only spawn the orb 2-3 times a match like buffs in temple, therefore capturing the orb would grant more points than now. (but there should be a notification 30s before it spawns)

Discuss here.

Jugglemonkey.8741:

Also, the current versions of don’t stop and expeditious dodger are very useful if you run a build without dash

True but dash is not the only source of movement speed and superspeed has a similar purpose anyway. The main reason I proposed removing swiftness was that Arenanet could just say thief has enough mobility already, therefore we won’t add superspeed in additon. Superspeed has a lot of limits tho, it doesn’t affect movement skills, strafing, forward-strafing, backpedaling and caps at swiftness speed outside combat but it would be a lot of fun IMO.

but well “superspeed on shadowstep” could be replacing the current vigor effectiveness trait too.

To people using acro:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Let-s-compare-new-Acro-to-Deadly-Arts/first#post5953447

For example Spirit Watch could be refined to integrate heroes into the orb mechanics.
If you finish the channel rather than getting the orb you summon your selected hero to carry the orb back to your home point. If the hero dies, the orb returns to it’s original spawn location/disappears.
Another thing I would change in Spirit Watch is to only spawn the orb 2-3 times a match like buffs in temple, therefore capturing the orb would grant more points than now. (but there should be a notification 30s before it spawns)

What are your ideas for maps with heroes in them(not necessarily in an existing map)? What would be the role of your hero?

Balance patch coming soon. Please, just do the highlighted ones and I’d be happy.
Acro with Superspeed would be plain awesome! (<-made some adjustments here)

All of them are good suggestions, except “Shock Shield: damage decreased by 40%” is a bit too much imo, and maybe other skills should be nerfed instead.
Search and rescue requiring a target would be a better change than most ppl think because currently u can use it up to ~10s before anyone even goes down and the pet resses instantly if they do.

I added some to my thief balance thread down below.

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Cynz.9437:

BeepBoopBop.5403:

Cynz.9437:

XxsdgxX.8109:

MadVisions.4529:

MadVisions.4529:

vaxjani.9073:

What are you guys talking about, its a balanced skill. Reasonable damage, easy to interrupt…oh wait… /s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0QlyUfItUU

I can chip in too! ^^
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O46iGZHEgSs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HvjS6Kyr8A

???
at least 3/4 cast time or riot

wait wait wait!!! i found more!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqu2t8kco5A

Such animation hideing, so high casttime, wow!

EDIT:
you can guess! i found MORE!! XD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soOuBknNF_M

totally counterable by human reactions Kappa

Oh look, a skill dealing damage that fast at technically point blank! Who would have thought.

Is this guy serious? Can i /faceplam ?

To be fair, he did eat those Precision Strikes at point blank. If he was attacked with it from out of melee range, there is plenty of time to avoid it.

Avoiding it wasn’t the point lol

Let me guess, the “OP” damage that is completely trash 1vX is?

Yes because projectiles go around your target to hit the others behind him and they don’t hit your target if you stand inside his hitbox.

This was a good thing when steal and stolen abilities were both on F1 but now you r right. +1

Brockolosso.8316:

or….you could balance thief and the whole game

That’s what we’ve all asked for with solutions attached since hot but balance never happened. This is a last-resort post with a simple solution.

Sword/Dagger is objectively the most fun weaponset. Which I think is mainly because how you can outplay people with infiltrator’s strike and return.

If S/D is so underpowered deliberately to make staff more desired, can’t we just swap staff 2 with sword 2 to at least have one fun evasive weaponset that is actually viable? Staff with a teleport would be a lot more engaging and sword is useless anyway but at least would have dmg on it.
I don’t really like the current staff playstyle we are forced into. It is pretty faceroll and feels like I play a warrior: brute-forcing your foes down with ludicrous dmg without being tactical.
Once it’s fun you can start balancing staff.

Thoughts?

P.S.: feel free to check out my main balancing thread in my signature.

This is just a sarcasm post, guys u dont get it?

Have the same experience guys, I prepared basilisk venom and waited for a revenant to jump me with the teleport. I used flanking strike and successfully dodged the hit from the teleport but the revenant got off the precision strike before i stunned him with the very same flanking strike so i lost half my hp while he was stunned.
(precision strike and flanking strike are both supposedly 1/2s cast time but flanking strike is in fact a longer cast)

XGhoul.7426:

Here it is:
Some tooltips have been fixed
1 skill gets butchered, ~8 skills get “shaved”
~5 skills previously not used are given a small buff
Skyhammer is now in ranked rotation

Dont forget unnecessary skill nerfs and extra bugs implemented like on disabling shot stutter and skills ruined like rifle 4 on warrior

I don’t support the idea of creating more heroes unless they get integrated in a conquest map. Stronghold is just not competitive or even enjoyable to me(shifts focus from pvping to running supply and pve). The only things I find good is the lord(skills, downedstate) and how we can chose heroes to spawn.

blood has another advantage: it doesn’t proc the second stack of basi venom, because it is not considered damage but it is lifesteal. So you often get an extra stun out of it.

(fire and air, howerver, consume the 2nd basi venom stack if they proc)

Leap and Blast finishers are in the right place but projectile and whirl finishers are so weak nobody ever pays attention to them.

The game itself was careful not to hand out too many finishers: autos only have a 20% change of being projectile finishers so I don’t see why some finishers get buffed by +100% or +200%.
A few terrible ones:

Projectiles Whirl finishers

Poison (2 s) Poison Bolts (2 s)
Vulnerability (x2, 5 s) Brutal Bolts (x2, 5 s)
Burning 1s Burning Bolts 1s

They were weak before the condi rework but since then 1s of burning or poison deals about half the damage because they became stacking condis and skills were introduced that each inflict 2-3 stacks of a condition. However, many things such as combos (some player skills and ranger pets) were left untouched

Booms.2594:

Yup that’s actually what anet is going to do. They think that will fix this broken short cd skill that does 5-8k damage.

Don’t forget that they implemented this change when they intended to nerf revenant. They cut back like 5-10% on a few skill and gave this skill +200%dmg at the same so it ended up being a buff for power revs overall.

Conclusion: be happy with a 4s to 5s nerf, and hope they don’t compensate the Precision Strike nerf by adding 20x[the lost damage] to the shiro heal.

+1
the fact that revenants can fire it out of their backs makes it even more weird. (doesn’t matter if u are behind or in front of them) + it hits for a kittened amount but the animation is too hard to see

Asrat.2645:

The impact strike change seems strange. Its a skill that you are supposed to hit. If you dont, you get punished.

I’m saying interrupts only, not misses. It is fair in the scope of movement-skills but it’s a pseudo movement skill. Would you be happy if you wanted to use Rampage but you get interrupted so you have to wait 180s before u can use it?
Not an important change anyway.

Asrat.2645:

The weaponsets do not follow a clear purpose. Both d/d and p/p are trying to be power and condi alike…and fail.
The easiest solution would be to essentially swap death blossom and unload.

Good point. A swap would not be enough to fix it tho. They should make dedicated condi and dedicated power sets.

Asrat.2645:

Did you suggest to make the second part of pistol whip auto-evade?

What do u mean auto-evade? The second part is already evading but if you can use it without the precast u get to be more flexible. Your enemies wouldn’t be stunned in it if used separately tho.

Asrat.2645:

Maniacal persistence is pure bs. Pls dont put it on thief.
Its nonsense for a crit build and nobody wants a non-crit build to crit.
The main problem of non-zerker thieves is the ferocity, not the precision.

Imo it isn’t that bad, revenants used it before mallyx nerf. The idea is to let people with lower crit chance have crits. If it increases your crit chance while in stealth or combat it is simply a better hidden killer which had no use anyway. What do u mean ferocity is the problem? it depends on how u set up your gear.

Should reward the win to the team with more kills instead. Or the team who has more points captured at the moment. Wouldn’t be perfect but still better than personal score.

zinkz.7045:

You don’t have to be playing the permastealth condi trapper troll build to use trapper runes, there are other builds and there is no “serious business” in GW2, it is a super casual MMO with signifcant design flaws that make the idea of it being “serious business” a joke.

Virtually nothing needs buffs and pretty much everything to varying degrees needs nerfs to tone back the skilless powercreep and mindless spam of this game.

Well this thread is mainly about sPvP so yes balance is important.
Wouldn’t mind tho if they kept the traps bad to leave more room for trolling only in WvW.

zinkz.7045:

Kicker.8203:

• Traps: Tripwire and Needle Trap are really weak. I would add a good bunch of damage to them even though it would cause revealed.

No thanks, if you play with trapper runes these two are the best traps by far, putting damage on them would make them useless, the needle trap is already strong in a condi build – 3 sec immob (even more in WvW), thousands in bleeds/poison damage, long poison to reduce healing, unblockable, vuln & might with the trait, etc.

That’s just a troll build coz u are perma-stealthed and u can still harass people. Not good for any serious business.

Updated the post to highlight the most important and easiest fixes. Don’t bother reading the non-highlighted stuff if you are not interested. @Arenanet fix those only after the highlighted stuff are done.

Poly-luminescent Undulating Refractor (Black/Green/Orange) is the jewel that can give your entire character a hue for those who don’t know.

Will it ever be possible to add it to ascended accessories?
This is the same kind of thing as old luck system. You can only get it at the cost of a part of your stats.(downgrading to exotic accessory and having fixed stats on the jewel too)
IMO it shouldn’t give any stats just appearence. Maybe it could be an extra slot on your character that’s called effects or something. That way devs could come up with more effects (footsteps for those who don’t have a legendary etc)

Emapudapus.1307:

I dont like class stacking restriction, since with 1 class you can make so many variations and builds that in the end it can look like 2 seperate classes. With class restriction you are eliminating this diversity.

Nobody likes it but it is for the greater good. It would be hard to draw the line between 2 different roles on the same class in many cases. On thief you are ultimately stuck to 1 role anyway and if u r running viable builds you can’t go too far from the meta on the majority of classes.

Valkyriez.6578:

I’m no programmer but that sounds like a cool idea but a nightmare to write code for. There would be so much backend code need to be written to make it work, identifying priorities etc and then UI design.

Well it’s not an easy job but definitely not a nightmare.
About the UI: they can do all this with existing ui elements…

Yeah, actually the tournaments show a false metagame because teams have to play at least 4 different classes. Probably the actual best composition has 3-4 revenants(note that they can go tankier with traits, runes and paladin’s amulet too).

They should have the same rules as for everyday pvp. Either remove class stacking limit and balance things(<-will never happen) or add the limit to the game. This doesn’t close out the possibility for multiclassing: people could be able to choose from multiple classes they are capable of playing. e.g.:

Entering Queue for Ranked Arena:
—Choose the classes you can play and add a priority to them(1 is highest priority, x means you dont want to play that):

• [ 1 ] Warrior
• [x] Revenant
• [ 3 ] Guardian
• [x] Thief
• [x] Engineer
• [x] Ranger
• [x] Mesmer
• [ 2 ] Necromancer
• [x] Elementalist

Note: Groups are organised with 4 different classes at least with people on their highest priority classes. Once they load in and see what the enemy team is most likely running they can change to one of their lower priority classes if they feel like they get countered(and if they meet the 4 different classes rule). The matchmaking also finds you a group if you can only play your 2nd or 3rd etc priority class.

Note: People wouldn’t be able to log to classes marked with an x. And they automatically load in on the top priority character of theirs if possible. Or to help slow-loaders, first a window pops-up about who plays what in both teams so you can choose what you want to run thus you would only have to load in once.

WuGzaGenius.5684:

Auudam.2971:

Esports is growing more then ever.
I love this game but it’s not Esports friendly in this pvp mode.
Arena could make this the biggest MMORPG Esports game.
Over and out.

As much as I would love arenas, Its what drove WoW into a kittenhole. The viewer experience was so bad watching people basically duel in small maps…

You’d think it would be more intimate to watch but Gw2 Needs, NEEDS an in game spectator for these types of events much like CS:GO. You open up the client go to the game browser and spectate each and every person.

This would open up to looking at their builds ON YOUR OWN WATCH, checking out each players perspective whenever you want.

Immersion is the way to go, watching this game like a chess game isn’t.

+1 but they went to preyent at twitch too so keep that as well

yeah its way less powerful than bunker mes was. but the ressing is similarly trivialized

Aggrostemma.1703:

I would be absolutely fine getting kicked out of queue if on a loading screen.

What about a pop-up message?

“You are about to change instance. If you continue your queueing will reset.”

“Stay in the world / Enter”

Yeah there are so many way to fix this and they act liek there is none

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAW8YnUqA9sgNsAWsCctglZB7JAUn+WOTt5UWD+feQfol480A-TpBFABA8AAa7gA0wRAQk9HI4CA8fZAA

Always full Astral coz of passives like Dolyak runes.
Instant resses.

Supreme.3164:

Anet doesn’t need any VIP section, they simply ignore the forum and ask top players for balance suggestions, which are arguably much better than opinionated trash like this thread

Maybe if arenanet would let multiple experienced people discuss builds instead of asking the abjured in PMs, the abjured classes wouldn’t be as op as they are. They are the ones biast, they get tons of money for it too so why wouldn’t they be.

The forums are full of complete garbage threads and opinions so, to help Arenanet find the right answer to balance *they should have a forum section for balance where only players with 4-5k+ games can post(I wouldn’t mind an IQ test either :P). *

This would make people who actually have a valid opinion to be heard. Everyone hates when his good idea gets lost in the flood of trash which the forum usually is. (this is one of the reasons Helseth doesn’t post on the forum).

Moreover, it would make it easier for Arenanet to get feedback. (less comments to go through but they are of higher quality)

No offense but so to speak I’m not satisfied with current balancing. Neither the quantity nor the quality. I do understand that it’s hard to get feedback from the forums because half the people say that thief and warrior is op half the people say that they are way too weak. This is why the people who make these comments should be sorted.

There are many good changes each balance patch but the amount of buffed meta classes or too gentle shavings makes out the other half of the changes each patch. To give u an idea I quote myself from the finals discussion:

out of 20 players:
(each team had to pick at least 4 classes to meet the rules)
7 Revs (later 8 revs, which is the upper limit)
4 Eles
4 Necro
3 Engi
they all have to be nerfed. It’s funny that these were the strongest ones last balance patch too. Instead of buffing the most op classes or -in a better case- shaving them, they should be decapitated. Like why did they triple the dmg on rev sword2 if it was the most broken class’s most broken weapon already? Why did they buff (@thief) d/p more than s/x if it was already way better? Acrobatics negligible buffs when its utter rubbish? Engi shavings? Necro buffs?? and the list goes on… plus this happens every patch.

To those people who don’t have enough matches played to post something in the VIP PvP balance category they could still post valuable feedback to regular threads which VIP ppl could still read and quote in a VIP thread.