Guild Wars 2

Kadin.2356:

This is all good until you factor in aegis. Never again able to backstab a player with a guardian in party? Check.

Just how often can a Guardian share Aegis though?

Alternatively, Anet can make Backstab only deal max damage when actually hitting the target from behind. As of now, hitting your target from the sides deals full backstab damage.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Lightning_Flash

Damage: 365
Radius: 120
Range: 900
40s CD

• This skill has no activation time and can be cast in the middle of another skill without interrupting it.
• You can still use this skill to teleport when stunned, but it will not break stun.
• Kills with this skill register as sword kills in the achievement panel.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Blink

Breaks stun
Range: 900
30s CD

• Blink is highly subjective to the terrain between the Mesmer and the target destination. It is most reliable when used to cross completely flat planes and will only cross gaps in instances where the Mesmer could easily walk there without jumping.
———————————-

Compare the 2 without any traits. You get one blink which is exclusively defensive and another one that dishes out AoE damage can be used offensively or defensively and synergizes well with chaining Elementalist combos but has 10 seconds longer cool down.

Now, when does LF fall off? When you use 2 Adept Traits, Blink gets a 1,200 range and a 24 sec CD which makes it infinitely better than LF if you’re only using it defensively.

I’m not being an Elitist but those who say LF is useless compared to mesmer blink are usually DD players who exclusively use LF defensively or to land Churning Earth from time to time.

@katniss
No, my bad. I just assumed that windwalker was gonna QQ about eles being weak in general seeing how he claimed that LF is weaker than Elementalist Auto Attacks which is obviously an exaggeration.

Now if they remove the Damage from LF, keep it at 900 range, and don’t put the Break Stun back then yes I can see this skill working like RtL with 20/40 seconds CD.

So excited about this. Some of the posted ones sound Meh but there are 40 of them so hopefully the others are good.

Windwalker.2047:

Kyon.9735:

It’s already stronger than Mesmer Blink. 16sec with trait reduction is too OP.

Mesmer blink can be buffed to 1200 range and 24s cd-AND IT BREAKS STUN
how is that stronger than 1 auto attack worth of dmg?

Auto attack damage? It deals more damage than any Elementalist Auto Attack. It deals more damage than Arcane Wave or Arcane Blast. You should really try using it offensively sometimes. Stop using it exclusively for defensive purposes.

Yes it’s not a stun breaker but it lets you use it even when disabled which lets you get out of harm’s way momentarily. Yes, Elementalist is weak compared to all other classes, but stop exaggerating it.

It’s already stronger than Mesmer Blink. 16sec with trait reduction is too OP.

Zacchary.6183:

Kyon.9735:

oscuro.9720:

When a thief stealths, swing around wildly and don’t stop spinning. This will significantly make aback stab harder for the thief and may reduce damage by a significant amount.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Backstab
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flanking

Contradictory to its name, Backstab deals full damage on both sides as well. Spinning around wildly will still give a thief the same 75% chance to land a Backstab.

You mean 50% since you still have to be on the back half for it to count. Then you have the 10-30% chance that you’ll land it because the target (if they are competant) will be moving. And you have a short time before you miss the window and leave stealth.

Err, I was counting Back, Left Side, Right Side opposed to Front only. But whatever, it means it’s still easy to land backstab

oscuro.9720:

When a thief stealths, swing around wildly and don’t stop spinning. This will significantly make aback stab harder for the thief and may reduce damage by a significant amount.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Backstab
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flanking

Contradictory to its name, Backstab deals full damage on both sides as well. Spinning around wildly will still give a thief the same 75% chance to land a Backstab.

Maugetarr.6823:

LordByron.8369:

I perfectly agree with you and exactly as i said they should balance shadow return as they balanced ele….

Thus as you said removing breakstun from shadow return and other defensive skills and putting it into signet of shadow and ambush

That would be coherent to what they did to ele skills

Thank you to proving my point.

The break stun was removed from lightning flash because stun breaks were too concentrated in the cantrip skills. They moved a lot of stunbreaks around on a lot of classes at the same time to try to increase build diversity. Other cantrips have too long of a CD for their effect, but that’s a different topic.

Problem is it did not increase build diversity for eles at all. They put the stunbreaks in lackluster skills which only made it a nerf to cantrips.

PVP Perspective:

After watching the EU bracket for the Mistpedia weekly 2v2 PvP tournament earlier today, it was a general consensus in the twitch stream chat that S/P PW spamming thieves should be punished. It’s literally spam 3 to win.

Stun + Evade + Damage in 1 button. This is literally the universal answer to anything. Of course it’s not the first choice of weapon set in WvW because Stealth + Mobility is more important there.

Thieves can be scarier in sPvP if you play glassy builds because defensive stats are a lot lower while they can get close or equal amount of Attack (3k+) they can get in WvW without buffs. But yeah, it’ll teach you how to be more careful and you can learn their spike combo at the very least but it won’t totally prevent you from dying again and again from them.

As for those who say thieves are only good 1v1, no. If you’re having trouble fighting 1v2 or 1v3 then you must be playing it wrong. With all your access to stealth and teleports/shadowsteps you should be able to land cheap shots and eventually down someone. Of course it’s a different story if you’re fighting a group of full bunkers or cheesy hambows.

Kibbles.9813:

To kill a Healing Signet Warrior you need either Poison or more than one person supplying DPS. This is what makes Hambow Warriors so attractive in sPvP; you get a profession with a one-button AoE point-spanning fire field, constant high passive health regeneration, AoE stun ability, temporary condition immunity on demand, temporary direct damage immunity on demand, active CC immunity on demand, passive CC immunity triggered by initial application, Stability on demand and respectable damage output. Then you throw in a short-CD Condition Cleansing and Boon Application via Lyssa Runes and end up with the mess we have now.

Very well said.

If you want DPS, switch to S/D. If you want DPS with survivability, go for S/F. However, you might lack burst damage to kill tanky builds.

The most common Fresh Air builds are 0/30/10/0/30 and 0/30/10/20/10, the first one allows you to stack might while the second one is more of a “shotgun” build which relies on bursting and killing someone in a blink of an eye but both builds are squishy. Of course there are a lot of other variations too, you can wait for other players who are willing to give out their builds. I mainly use these 2 builds both in PvP and WvW.

Scepter + Dagger/Focus
x/30/x/x/x build.
Zerker Amulet.
Scholar (for shotgun build) or Ogre Runes. Some use Divinity Runes.
Sigil of Force/Air/Fire/Energy are the usual ones used.

Utilities are up to you. Usually defensive cantrips and arcane skills. Never go without Lightning Flash though.

This is solely my opinion. DD in PvP can’t have DPS comparable to other DPS classes and have Survivability at the same time. The best thing you can do is go Zerker Amulet and use Defensive Cantrips/Arcanes if you want to go DD DPS with a tidbit of “survivability”. Eles are in the lowest HP and Armor tier, you don’t have the luxury of going full zerker and still get decent HP and/or Armor like other classes can do. You’re like a melee thief that has weaker DPS and no access to stealth.

1. I believe that Valkyrie Amulet is not good on Elementalists who wants a DPS role especially on a DD 0/10/0/30/30 build. Sure you will get decent 2.4k+ Armor but your Crit Chance is laughable even with perma Fury.

2. I wouldn’t suggest using Scholar Runes on a DD build. You’re a squishy melee class, if you get hit by a random AoE your HP will be easily below the 90% HP threshold. You can use Runes of Ogre instead. Same goes with your trait, Vital Striking is not advisable for the same reason.

3. Not enough condi cleanse. Replace Vital Striking with either Cleansing Wave, Soothing Disruption, or Soothing Wave.

4. You can try playing Fresh Air s/x ele. It’s the standard skirmish DPS build in PvP. Your “survivability” comes from proper uses of Blinds, Dodges, and defensive cantrips/arcanes.

What are your sources for these statistics? Engi and Necro by far are not the least played classes at least in PvP and they’re not exactly in a bad spot there either.

Muchacho.2390:

Kyon.9735:

At least do something about main hand Dagger Auto Attack so we’d know if we’re hitting enemies in stealth.

You mean something like a chain attack?

Doesn’t have to be a chain attack, Elementalists don’t have chain attacks because Anet discourages passive play on Elementalists a lot. Maybe add even a small animation effect or something if you’re hitting something on Dagger Auto Attack. Of course it won’t be really needed if Anet decides to put Damage Counters on the combat log for hitting units in stealth.

At least do something about main hand Dagger Auto Attack so we’d know if we’re hitting enemies in stealth.

Brando.1374:

Kyon.9735:

People need to realize how easy it is to reapply conditions. We need more cleanses.

No you need to learn when to cleanse conditions.
1-3 stacks of bleeds will tickle many classes and many players will clear them, then they complain that all of a sudden we burst them with 10+ bleeds and 4 other conditions, if you learn to time your cleanse much like you learn to dodge a big attack the damage you take is minimal.

That won’t be a problem if the only condition applied is Bleeding. I main both Elementalist and Engineer, I also play Thief, Warrior, and Mesmer both on Zerker builds and Condi builds. I won’t lie to myself, you cleanse the condis I applied and I will be able to re-apply them again before you have your cleanses on cooldown.

I apply torment and 10 stacks of bleeding on my warrior and I see you cleanse it, no problem I’ll re-apply them again in a matter of seconds. I use static shot on my Engineer in WvW, I can instantly stack Confusion, Blind, Bleeding, Burning, and Torment in 1 click of a button and I still have other skills that can apply and stack more conditions. I don’t even want to talk about Dire Perplexity Thieves.

I’m talking about the ease of application, not L2P cleansing issues. I don’t have any issues with condition damage (maybe aside from torment in impale), but the rate of application is really absurd.

People need to realize how easy it is to reapply conditions. We need more cleanses.

With the coming nerf to Power Builds (outside of pvp), the last thing conditions need are buffs except in PVE. I’m tired of seeing 10s+ immobilized on top of other conditions.

Another counter argument is that there is no boon that reduces Condition Duration or Condition Damage.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Whenever I roll in water attunement, It heals for a total of 7k. Regen from water attune gives me about 2.6k, (regen is like 300-400).
What I think is the most important thing about this is my attack and armor.
Im sitting at 3k attack, and 2.5k armor. Ofc, I hit like a wet noodle, but essentially I am this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VDvgL58h_Y

You have those stats along with 2k healing power? Sounds really interesting. How much Crit Damage though?

What eles need are more active defenses like evades and blinds in their weapon skills (I don’t think Anet will ever give them a higher base HP or armor). Eles can’t rely forever on long CD cantrips which only extend their lives for a few more seconds before getting bursted down again.

cheese.4739:

@OP: Engineers and Elementalists can already proc their on-swap sigils every cooldown, so the Warrior gaining this won’t be anything new… but with the current state of the War, it better be done in such a way that they don’t dominate the meta for /another/ million years to the next balance patch.

They’re both locked up to 2 sigils when the patch comes though and they can only proc on-swap sigils every 9 seconds while warriors can proc up to 4 every 10 seconds. The frequency of a warrior swapping weapons can be very similar to how much an elementalist swaps attunement (frequency of how they can proc 1 on-swap sigil) so Warriors still get an advantage here. No matter how many times an engineer changes kits, he will still need to wait 9 seconds to proc the 2 sigils again.

Executioner and Sleight of Hand are probably the best GMs you can get with the basic 10 30 0 0 30 D/P build. They’re not half bad either.

Jelzouki.4128:

rhodoc.2381:

I’m just wondering that;

Isnt this rune unbalanced for those classes that has spammable elite skills like Thief and Warr or maybe other if any. As an elementalist, my only elite would be elemental to use with this rune and it is 180sec total cd. FGS and Tornado is even not a choice.

Dont take this as a qq topic. I really dont know if this is balanced.

No elite skills are spammable. As for the thief, people don’t realize how difficult it is to play a thief without the so called OP mechanics Anet gives us. As for the warrior, that’s debatable. The signet of rage isn’t really in comparison to other elite skills. It’s just a might stack with fury and swiftness. Using this elite basically limits us to using superior runes of lyssa. An elementalist for example would have a fiery greatsword, now if a skill like that had a 60 second cool down, that would be OP.

To conclude, I think it’s fine where it is. That is just my opinion. Sorry if I came off offended or rude.

I think any class would like to have Signet of Rage as one of their choices for an elite skill.

If they want to increase Ele’s survivability without bumping up the base HP, they either need to boost Ele’s healing where it wouldn’t require them to invest most stat points in healing or give them more access to evades and blinds from weapon skills.

ens.9854:

The stealth QQ baffles me. I generally stealth only once or twice a fight for <2 seconds and only bc it allows me to perform backstab. It’s almost always a byproduct of using black powder, usually against warriors/necros/rangers or using my heal and I GTFO of stealth ASAP.

I only stealth for stealth if attacking is impossible (ie. vs mesmer). Fights vs glass players is usually just a bunch of auto attack and teleport spamming; heartseeker if they are low. Just this is enough to shutdown 90% of them easily… It’s sad

But you do not represent the entire population of thieves which does things a lot differently than you.

TooBz.3065:

Maybe, but every class has weaknesses that people can comment on. My only point is your collective obsession with secrecy (which does not appear elsewhere) may actually be hurting you.

Where did you get the idea that people are hiding their builds? You’ll see builds posted here and there if you look deep enough because it’s usually covered by posts regarding how weak the class is. Or maybe there is no powerful build that can compete against any class to hide.

While I’m all in for making a decent condition build for eles, I don’t think Confusion fits the class especially on RTL. I think AoE 5 stacks of confusion is OP. But hey, Warriors can stack confusion almost better than Mesmers, so why not? #AnetLogic

Lightning Touch – I put a question mark in there because I want to see others reaction on it. People rarely use it (because of long cast time) so I thought maybe adding another defensive condition might make people use it.

Ring of Earth – I really think it needs a few stacks of torment.

You guys might have noticed that I put in a lot of blinds and evasion. Elementalists belong in the lowest HP and Armor tier with no natural defensive mechanism like Stealth or Clones. I don’t think Anet will agree on giving Elementalists a higher health pool so the only solution I can think of to increase Ele survivability is give them more access to evasions/blocks and blinds. Giving them more evasion frames/blocks and blinds might make bunker Eles more viable. We can’t always rely on High CD Cantrips to prolong our lives for 2~4 seconds longer.

Ride The Lightning – Blind or Weakness
Shatterstone – Blast Finisher (It explodes!)
Ring of Earth – Evasion Frame or Block (Somewhat makes sense since you get covered by stones). Add torment too.
Lightning Touch – Add blind(?)
Lightning Flash – Blind

1. This idea will get shot down by other players playing other classes even before it has a chance. I, for one, thinks it might be a bit OP. It’s like having 4 weapon sets I can swap on at any given time depending on what skill I want.

2. Removing attunement swap cooldown completely might destroy the Elementalist’s profession mechanic. One thing I like about the elementalist is that I have to carefully manage my attunement swapping to adapt to the situation. While I like this class to go up in the food chain, I don’t want it to be flooded with “meta players” who play the class simply because it’s strong like Warrior and Thief profession. Even the most versatile class, Warriors, have 5 seconds weapon swapping.

IMO the real reason Elementalists are underpowered is because of the skills itself. Very high cooldown for “lackluster” skills. Does Churning Earth, a static channeling skill which makes you a sitting duck literally and can be easily telegraph and dodged deserve a 30 second cooldown? Does Fire Grab, a buggy clunky skill which is very hard to hit deserve a 45 second cooldown? Does RtL deserve a 40 second cooldown? I don’t even want to get started with Focus skills.

So I think the best way to buff the class is to review the skill cooldowns and reduce it appropriately. Elementalist is in the lowest HP and armor tier without natural defensive mechanism like clones or stealth, so give Elementalist skills more evasion frames and blinds. I really wonder why thieves, who already is in medium armor, has more access to spammable blinds and evades even though they already have easy access to stealth. One more thing, remove the effects of chill on attunement swap recharge.

Form.8741:

It’s always great to see people constantly attack thief as a profession.

I love how people gang up on thief, a melee class with no armor or HP, which absolutely HAS to evade 80% of all damage from all other classes in order to just keep from being downed in 2-4 seconds, which cannot stand to to toe with ANY other classes except maybe ele, which has NO protect, only ONE stability, 3 stunbreaks (compared to warrior’s 6+), NO condition immunity, very few condition removal traits and only three utilities (including heal) that actually remove ANY damaging conditions at all (and no utilities/skills that remove ALL conditions, unlike warrior/engi/necro/etc.)….

And yet you complain because you suck and die to thief. Only bad players lose to thief. Stop, stop whining about thief. Thief has no invulns, only evades. Warrior, Guardian, Ele, Mesmer, Engi have invulns…

• Which Light Armor class doesn’t need to dodge 80% of attacks so they won’t be downed in 2-4 secs? Oh, right. Thief is a medium armor class. My bad. I guess medium armor classes have it worse than light armor classes.
• How many Evades from weapon sets do thieves have and how spammable are they?
• How long does an invulnerability of other classes last and how long is the cooldown compared to evades with no cooldown? Are their Invulnerability skills spammable as well?
• How many classes have access to Condition Immunity?
• Only bad players lose to thieves? Oh, right. There must be lots of bad top tier PVP players. Shame on them for losing to thieves.

Lastly,
• How many classes are able to reset a fight at any given time?

I love how you underestimate the power of Evasion in this game. A solid proof of who’s a “bad player” and who’s not.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

Kyon.9735:

Yamsandjams.3267:

11 confusion stacks for over 10 seconds… from an ele? Well, if they weren’t gonna nerf perplexity in the upcoming balance patch, they sure are now. XD

It’s 1 condition and eles don’t have lots of conditions to dish out so it should be pretty easy to cleanse. Not a lot of hard CC skills to interrupt the enemy either.

But yes, I agree. I think it needs a nerf OR buff mesmer confusion. I’ve always thought Confusion is one of the trademark conditions of a mesmer but seeing how a rune is better than the class itself is weird.

My Ele has access to: Burning, bleeding, Torment, Confusion, Cripple, Chill
Not a huge amount of access but decent and the damaging ones are Burning (about 850 per a tick) Bleeding (can hit over 1k ticks) and Confusion (can hit up to 2k ticks)

However that requires a specific Rune set and a Sigil to get access to them, without them my build would be no where near as strong.

Erm, Mesmer has insane access to Confusion. My old build was a Confusion build Sahhters = Confusion, Clone death = confusion, weapon = confusion

when built right Mesmer is GREAT at confusion. It is really only out done by Engineer and Warrior when it comes to confusion.

It will NOT be nerfed as they recently nerfed it, to the point a lot of people don’t use it any more. They have reasonable cool downs on the 4/6 and 6/6 that makes it MUCH more balanced – unless used on either Warrior, Mesmer or Engineer seeing as they already have insane access to confusion.

Yeah, I should have pointed out “Natural Access” to conditions. Also, it’s funny how mesmers need to trait and stuff for Confusion while Engineers has more access just through weapon kits. And Warriors getting better access to Confusion with just 1 trait doesn’t really sound right.

Ichishi.9613:

2 years have passed. And people still complain about HS.
Hs was already nerfed. It has obvious and long animation. No evade frames. User of HS CANNOT interrupt it. Thief using hs can’t dodge, can’t block, can’t stealth, can’t move.
I can imagine troubles eles have with certain thief builds, but hs spam? Then this game is not for you, at least on ele. Besides engi, I can’t imagine any other class to be able to punish HS spam as much as ele can.

It means either that:
a. Anet has failed balancing for the past “two” years.
b. People never learn how to cope with it.

Part of me wants to say it’s “a” but that’s because Anet has failed balancing on many other areas that it affected my view of their balancing team. TBH I’m more wary/afraid of Flanking Strike/Pistol Whip spammers than HS spammers.

On Thieves:
Using Dagger, it’s pretty hard to fight thieves. If you go with lots of offensive stats, you’ll be as squishy as hell. If you go hybrid/defensive, you will lack the burst damage. Thieves can easily go to stealth and WILL go to stealth (if they are decent) if they take too much damage so IMO you can’t kill them if you don’t burst them. They’ll just go back in stealth and try to burst you again.

On Scepter, just try your best to burst them before they burst you which is a lot harder than it sounds. You can take prolonged fights if you’re using focus, just be sure to use Obsidian Flesh wisely.There will be kitten y thieves though who will chase you like a madman while out of stealth. For these types, just drop Phoenix behind you then burst with air skills.

Warriors PvP:
You can’t burst a decent warrior without using scepter/dagger. Burst him before he has a chance to pop endure pain. Prolonged fights are losing battles too. I’ve played 1v1s with a lot of “decent” warriors, I win some, I lose most.

My most memorable fight was against a Hammer + Axe/Shield Warrior. I blinded and dodged all of his hammer CCs and was winning with 90% HP while he had 20% left. I was prepping to burst him with melee Phoenix (hits 3x) so I let him get close but I got caught up with his Bull’s Charge + Eviscerate + Shield Bash then switch to hammer. He took out 90% of my HP in 3 seconds lol.

Yamsandjams.3267:

11 confusion stacks for over 10 seconds… from an ele? Well, if they weren’t gonna nerf perplexity in the upcoming balance patch, they sure are now. XD

It’s 1 condition and eles don’t have lots of conditions to dish out so it should be pretty easy to cleanse. Not a lot of hard CC skills to interrupt the enemy either.

But yes, I agree. I think it needs a nerf OR buff mesmer confusion. I’ve always thought Confusion is one of the trademark conditions of a mesmer but seeing how a rune is better than the class itself is weird.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Kyon.9735:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Kyon.9735:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Mainly because some guy stated “thieves glassy builds are the best in glass builds”, which is just as silly as saying “Bunker guardians are the best in bunking, better than other professions.”.

Thieves have good survivability only if the player is very skilled. The profession probably has one of the highest skill cap, and most players aren’t able to react properly to thieves burst damage + counter that skill cap, that is why you have so much complaints and gnashing of teeth.

At the highest competitive level, thieves aren’t really OP.

/end

He gave an example regarding glass thieves which is completely on topic. Giving an example about bunkers is different and kind of irrelevant.

So what are the top glass damage dealer classes in competitive PvP? Thieves, Shatter Mesmers, and Scepter Eles. Rifle Power Engineers have somewhat died out already. I wouldn’t call zerker HamBow warriors glass because they still have around 2.6k armor along with 21k HP because they will always put at least 20 in Defense trait line. Out of all 4 classes, thief is the most survivable simply because of its stealth mechanic. You don’t need skill to press 5 then 2 (D/P weapon set) then disengage if the fight is not going to your liking.

http://youtu.be/ZboUAtJSIt8?t=4m46s

Hambow needs SO MUCH SKILL to press ` and press 3 to drop a thief.

Learn at the gameplay itself seems that you need
Two warriors or more, and maybe a mixture of other
Play-ers to beat thieves.

http://youtu.be/ZboUAtJSIt8?t=10m12s

PS: The commentators don’t know what they are talking about on the 2nd link. That was not retaliation, but pure damage from the guardian/warrior. Maybe someone wants to claim whirling axe is OP now.

haviz.1340:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Mainly because some guy stated “thieves glassy builds are the best in glass builds”, which is just as silly as saying “Bunker guardians are the best in bunking, better than other professions.”.

Thieves have good survivability only if the player is very skilled. The profession probably has one of the highest skill cap, and most players aren’t able to react properly to thieves burst damage + counter that skill cap, that is why you have so much complaints and gnashing of teeth.

At the highest competitive level, thieves aren’t really OP.

/end

PW is such a skillful build to play.

Apparently pressing ` and ‘3’ is so difficult. Much balance required for make thieves a loot bag.

Going off topic again. This is about Thieves and other Glass Classes (Warriors are too tanky to be counted as a glass as long as they have 20 points in Defense). Everybody knows how OP HamBow is (though there are lot of Warriors who are still in denial), there’s no need to put them in discussion. One class being OP doesn’t justify another class being too-strong-but-not-as-strong.

Nerf thief? HAH. You don’t even understand the meta, and heck you don’t even understand what you’re talking about. Thief =/= OP in SPVP. Other professions continue to do better, and thief is somewhere in between.

/END.

Thief is “relatively ok” in PvP?

Is it me who doesn’t understand the meta or you? This thread won’t even exist if they are just “relatively ok”. The damage isn’t the problem, the stealth mechanic is. From what I see, your stand is “My thief gets eaten by HamBow Warriors and Condi Bunkers so it means we’re only relatively ok even though we drive out all other zerker builds”. What class doesn’t get owned by HamBow Warriors when fighting for a cap point? I think only a bunker or decap Engi or maybe bunker Ranger (with all those evades, they can easily dodge hammer attacks) can draw a stalemate without giving up the point if they are of equal skill level.

And FYI any glass build will have problems against bunker condi classes, not just thieves. You’re underestimating thieves too much. So what class and build does better offensively AND defensively than thief aside from HamBow warrior? TBH I don’t really think HamBow warriors can take over the DPS roaming role from a thieves completely. Yes, they’re tanky but they lack the instant burst damage thieves, scepter eles, and shatter mesmers can provide.

You should really check out the lineup of the top competitive teams. There’s a reason why you rarely see classes other than thief take the DPS role.

Sir Kaboomski.1508:

You know the single best counter to HS spam is chill.

Seriously.. chill your opponent. Makes HS go 1/2 the range. At that point you can outrun it.

Well, that works for HS spammers which solves this topic.

It would be a totally different case though if you put in other factors like thieves going to stealth or using Shadow shot or steal to close the gap again. And what chill skill is faster than HS spam aside from Frost Aura? Maybe Swapping weapons/attunement really fast with Sigil of Hydromancy.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Kyon.9735:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Mainly because some guy stated “thieves glassy builds are the best in glass builds”, which is just as silly as saying “Bunker guardians are the best in bunking, better than other professions.”.

Thieves have good survivability only if the player is very skilled. The profession probably has one of the highest skill cap, and most players aren’t able to react properly to thieves burst damage + counter that skill cap, that is why you have so much complaints and gnashing of teeth.

At the highest competitive level, thieves aren’t really OP.

/end

He gave an example regarding glass thieves which is completely on topic. Giving an example about bunkers is different and kind of irrelevant.

So what are the top glass damage dealer classes in competitive PvP? Thieves, Shatter Mesmers, and Scepter Eles. Rifle Power Engineers have somewhat died out already. I wouldn’t call zerker HamBow warriors glass because they still have around 2.6k armor along with 21k HP because they will always put at least 20 in Defense trait line. Out of all 4 classes, thief is the most survivable simply because of its stealth mechanic. You don’t need skill to press 5 then 2 (D/P weapon set) then disengage if the fight is not going to your liking.

http://youtu.be/ZboUAtJSIt8?t=4m46s

Hambow needs SO MUCH SKILL to press ` and press 3 to drop a thief.

Learn at the gameplay itself seems that you need
Two warriors or more, and maybe a mixture of other
Play-ers to beat thieves.

http://youtu.be/ZboUAtJSIt8?t=10m12s

PS: The commentators don’t know what they are talking about on the 2nd link. That was not retaliation, but pure damage from the guardian/warrior. Maybe someone wants to claim whirling axe is OP now.

haviz.1340:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Mainly because some guy stated “thieves glassy builds are the best in glass builds”, which is just as silly as saying “Bunker guardians are the best in bunking, better than other professions.”.

Thieves have good survivability only if the player is very skilled. The profession probably has one of the highest skill cap, and most players aren’t able to react properly to thieves burst damage + counter that skill cap, that is why you have so much complaints and gnashing of teeth.

At the highest competitive level, thieves aren’t really OP.

/end

PW is such a skillful build to play.

Apparently pressing ` and ‘3’ is so difficult. Much balance required for make thieves a loot bag.

Going off topic again. This is about Thieves and other Glass Classes (Warriors are too tanky to be counted as a glass as long as they have 20 points in Defense). Everybody knows how OP HamBow is (though there are lot of Warriors who are still in denial), there’s no need to put them in discussion. One class being OP doesn’t justify another class being too-strong-but-not-as-strong.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Mainly because some guy stated “thieves glassy builds are the best in glass builds”, which is just as silly as saying “Bunker guardians are the best in bunking, better than other professions.”.

Thieves have good survivability only if the player is very skilled. The profession probably has one of the highest skill cap, and most players aren’t able to react properly to thieves burst damage + counter that skill cap, that is why you have so much complaints and gnashing of teeth.

At the highest competitive level, thieves aren’t really OP.

/end

He gave an example regarding glass thieves which is completely on topic. Giving an example about bunkers is different and kind of irrelevant.

So what are the top glass damage dealer classes in competitive PvP? Thieves, Shatter Mesmers, and Scepter Eles. Rifle Power Engineers have somewhat died out already. I wouldn’t call zerker HamBow warriors glass because they still have around 2.6k armor along with 21k HP because they will always put at least 20 in Defense trait line. Out of all 4 classes, thief is the most survivable simply because of its stealth mechanic. You don’t need skill to press 5 then 2 (D/P weapon set) then disengage if the fight is not going to your liking.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Wintel.4873:

It’s true, any other class running a glassy build will auto-lose to a glassy thief. It’s extremely hard to kill something that is stunning/blinding you and stealthing away the moment you have a chance to retaliate.

Thief is the only class that can get away using a glassy build in PvP and still have plenty of survivability.

People need to stop with the braindead reply of “stealth can’t capture points”, it’s not about capturing points, it’s about roaming and causing unbalanced fights. Also having a guaranteed stomp on 5 out of 8 classes with blind field adds further to their effectiveness.

Hi, show me a bunker thief that can hold points as long as a hambow warrior or condi engineer or bunker guardian.

People need to stop insinuating thieves can play something else other than a glassy thief. SHOCKKK.

It’s true, any thieves running a bunker build will auto-lose to any other professions bunker build. It’s extremely easy to beat bunker thieves that have no access to stability and decapping when you enter stealth.

How did bunker thieves get into this discussion?

So it’s been 2 weeks. What’s up, Anet?

Splatter Paw.7238:

We’re not talking about d/p, were discussing hs. Plus you shadow shot to them and what? Still 66% move decrease. Chill a hs spammer and laugh when they burn there ini. I run chill on crit on my thief and it works wonders against thiefs. Plus it’s one of MANY MANY MANY ways to counter a single skill….

I mentioned D/P because it’s the most popular and common thief weapon set and it has Heartseeker. I don’t know what kind of players you’re fighting. The reason I pointed out Shadow Shot was because it’s one of the best Gap closers out there and greatly minimizes the 66% movement reduction effect of chill in terms of offense.

As an off topic that can be ignored but I want to point out: chill doesn’t affect initiative on thieves because it would break the class yet it affects Attunement Recharge on Eles because it also breaks a class. Logic.

Splatter Paw.7238:

Lol my all zerk armor/trinket thief had 2400 armor which means nothing. I can be one shotted by a warrior still, so your armor means nothing your still glassy. Ele has plenty of tools to down a thief, like idk chill, immobolize, and any number of blocks.

It really makes me chuckle to see after a year ppl whining over hs spam. Yesterday a thief spammed toward me, know what I did? Interrupted him in mid air and spiked him as he dropped problem solved not hard zerglings just stratigize.

Ehhh, since when Chill a problem for thieves especially for D/P build gap closers (Shadow Shot)?

Mbelch.9028:

His facts may be wrong but even he admits eles are affected “by chill like no other.”

So it should be changed

Sorry, I might have jumped the gun. I got a bit too edgy because I might have misinterpreted him saying “my necro got nerfed and is as weak as hell so you don’t deserve to be fixed.”

Andele.1306:

Ganathar.4956:

Andele.1306:

Ganathar.4956:

Finally the other benefit of attunements is the 20 skills, which is null and void because of it’s counterbalance of having them be inferior.

Tis not like you have a massive amount of self finishers or that each element has a skill thats on a total of 1.4+ power ratio.

Class is reliant on self finishing unlike other classes. This also means that other classes get stronger when they are with friends who have fields while eles stay the same.
Also having a skill with 1.4+ power ratio is nothing special, there are many skills in the game with a way bigger coefficient, just check the wiki.

Finally damage is not the only thing the matters, cooldowns, defense and utility are all extremely important. Keep in mind that you are talking about the squishiest class which also happens to have less useful defensive utilities than the class with the most health and armor.

Also kitten please if someone has hybrid utilities (aka both defensive and offensive at once) its ele, compare to my necro who has a cheeze 1v1 fake invul and the only 2 mobility moves having kinda giant icons showing where i port to if at all/not get cced to hell and back.

Are you serious? Thieves obviously has the most access to Hybrid skills. Offensive skills that have evasion frames and are very spammable.

And like Ryld said, Engineers have more access to blast finishers, even elite skill Supply Crate can be used as a blast finisher.

Seems like you have your “facts” wrong.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ryld.1340:

Suggestion: Make it affect Normal Hits and Conditions. Remove the Crit part.

Clearly a zerker player. The answer is no, Weakness got changed so that Zerker builds didn’t flat-out ignore it because it didn’t do what it was supposed to: reduce their damage. Changing it to affect conditions is just silly, as their damage output is actually not that high. Or is 1.5k DPS too much for you to handle?

Yes, it was useless pre-buff but now it completely destroys Power Builds as a whole. 50% reduction is too much, maybe something along the lines of 20%~30% reduction is more acceptable.

I think the only classes that would not want to this to be changed are the biggest offenders, Engineers (with Elixir Gun) and Necros.

Azukas.1426:

I have zero problems on my ele in the game today. Do we need minor things….very minor yes, but it’s a meta problem not a class problem tbh

This should be the last argument to be used by any person trying to prove a point. It doesn’t prove anything.

ShadowNinja.1238:

phaeris.7604:

These stats are more than some classes get?

I think you’ll find that literally every other class, literally, can get better stats than that with the exact same build you use.

You do realize that eles have the lowest hp starter stat and lowest armour stat at creation than anyone else, meaning they will always have the lowest stats with any sort of template when compared to another class.

Warriors start with 8k more health than an elementalist. Just for being a warrior.

Pretty sure guardians start with lowest hp.

Same as Elementalist and Thief.

Devs, please. Still waiting for some kind of feedback.

On a sidenote my friend got hacked last saturday. He posted on the forums and filed a ticket but still no feedback whatsoever. Maybe Anet is slacking off as a whole -.-

Lawful.5314:

Nah i didn’t mean WvW, i was talking about Team PvP, been doing a few to get daily done and i’m really getting rolled as an Elementalist, haha

EDIT: I’ve also seen in a old youtube video mentioning about regeneration passive gotten in water atunement, for each roll/dodge you would regenerate some health, but i cant seem to find it, did they remove that? cause the pvp video was like 1 year old.

Healing when dodging? That’s Evasive Arcana. 30 point into Arcana for the Grand Master trait.

What build are you running in PvP? I’m gonna say this in advance, D/D is terrible in PvP becaue you can’t get your stats as high as you can in WvW.

ShadowNinja.1238:

Um i just theory crafted with 0 10 0 30 30 and a secret gear and I got a bit over 2,800 armor, around 3,000 attack, around 31% crit chance, 51% as you have per a fury, around 80% crit damage and around 15-16k health. This is with exotics and ascended trinkets. *This stats is more than some classes can get and also ele is one of the best classes in 1v1 I’m not sure what gear you’re in maybe masterwork… *

These stats can be even easier to get for other classes. You can only get half of these stats in PvP too since there are no Server Bonuses, less trinket combination variety, and no food and guard buffs.