Guild Wars 2

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.

SS/SR was not nerfed because the same as LF because it is the only stunbreak in the deception skill set (unlike how cantrips had multiple), and the second half has a limited timeframe + returns you negating the gained mobility forcing you to choose between movement and condi cleaning. It also has a 20 second longer CD than LF.

Edit: Also, why would they put a stunbreak on ambush when shadow trap is already supposed to be the stunbreak trap? The problem was they nerfed that in the wrong direction after it became an instant out when they buffed it.

ryan.6217:

LordByron.8369:

Try doing that in fractal.

in fractal(s) I would probably do the same thing, accept drop the 3 skill. too risky.515151515151515. And if i was against a boss id whip out my shortbow and 1 keeping my finger on 3 incase of aggro.

Because your group definitely won’t kick you for using shortbow and spamming auto attack against a boss.

RedSpectrum.1975:

Maugetarr.6823:

DeceiverX.8361:

Dancing dagger should just be remade into another skill, frankly. Would be interesting if the skill slot was occupied by something which copied the conditions on you back to the target.

I really want to see Dancing Dagger made into a single target rollover. For 2 initiative, throw a dagger and mark your target on a successful hit. 2 more initiative, shadowstep to and cripple your target.

This this has potential, but that dagger is in them on rollover, so would it still do DoT if the rollover skill isn’t activated?

No. I don’t want to copy impale by giving a DoT ability. Maybe it could cripple for 3 seconds every 3 seconds for 3 pulses. I don’t want damage on the shadowstep either, since there would be cries of OP rather quickly if it were an instant cast ability. The idea is to give X/D more utility as it already has decent damage. Currently Dancing Dagger is supposed to be a utility skill, but falls short.

The projectile could also be sped up.

DeceiverX.8361:

Dancing dagger should just be remade into another skill, frankly. Would be interesting if the skill slot was occupied by something which copied the conditions on you back to the target.

I really want to see Dancing Dagger made into a single target rollover. For 2 initiative, throw a dagger and mark your target on a successful hit. 2 more initiative, shadowstep to and cripple your target.

1) D/D + SB
2) 0/30/25/15/0
3) WvW, PvP

Allie Murdock.8152:

The answer is, we don’t. My first 80 was an Elementalist. After that, I started a Thief which I got up to 74, a Necro which I got up to 22, and now I have a Warrior that is 80. Also have alts of every class.

Also, when I was in the Alpha before I started here, I mostly played Guardian and Ranger to lvl80. This was before they had implemented events in any of the lvl50+ maps. I had a friend that helped me grind up, and we would run around showing off that we hit 80 by grinding mobs.

I dunno why I shared that whole thing, but the point is that we definitely all play a variety of classes, just like you!

Why’d you stop on the thief? You could craft level those last 6!

I don’t have a strong opinion either way on this subject. I don’t like using conditions because I like seeing big single numbers rather than many more smaller numbers. I think people’s main complaint is that conditions start out better for the passive survivability, but fall short in terms of speed once you add in crit rates and damage (when speaking about power builds).

An example: Soldier War vs Dire War

The Dire war has bigger numbers (base) per attack than the Soldier war does, but if the Soldier War trades some PTV armor for some zerk, he could outpace the condi war pretty easily.

The following are examples of (incomplete/non viable) PTV and Dire war builds that are as close to the same defensive stats as possible. A full zerk war could certainly out-DPS the dire war, but he would have to start trading passive survivability for speed.

PTV : http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vIAQNAscTgMdCEmHGZIF58gKTh8A-z0BBofCiEEgUBBK1sIasVNFRjVZDT9iIqOAwBwv9tv/G48zP/8zPvf/93f/93A-w

Dire: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vIAQNAscTgMdCEmHGZIF58IJTh8A-zECB4iCiUAA0CgkAQZqFRjtqpIasKZER1KlYBAOA2tu1d3AjP+4jP+4t7u7u7u7GA-w

Tl;DR: Condis hit their full potential damage with a higher passive survivability, while zerk builds have a higher potential, but have to trade more passive stats for it. People get their panties in a bunch on both sides because of this.

caveman.5840:

i don’t want the mesmer to lose there stun breaker .
i actually would like to see them buff the #3 on mesmer sword to make it a true stun breaker

and IS/IR should go back to a stun breaker
IS /IR is so broken in its current state.

it is a true head ache. to have skills that do not work properly

anet said this would make for a more active play style. when they nerfed the thieves IS/IR
it hasn’t even achieved what they wanted.
unless they just wanted the thief to break down like a cheep wristwatch when confronted with stuns ?

Mesmer sword 3 actually is a true stunbreaker, but it’s not mentioned in the tooltip. Phase retreat on the otherhand (staff 2) is an instant cast, but not a true stunbreak like how ours was after the first nerfing. I would be happy with it if they just returned it to instant cast and reduced the return range to 600 which would be similar to swap’s range (i.e. a good juke, but keeps you in combat/stunned so people don’t QQ about it).

Orangekun.5140:

That’s odd. The tooltip is wrong, then?

Probably the same thing that happened with the condition removal tooltip when they made them more helpful/accurate, but no one uses it so it hasn’t been brought to their attention.

Black Teagan.9215:

I believe, they think the thief is OP, because they can’t or won’t see, that the thief is a very broken class (without love from the devs), who need help and not more nerfs.

Nearly every QQ Thread, who try to tell us thieves are OP, relates to Stealth + SA.
I have never seen a OP thread about Acrobatic, Steal or one of the many other traitlines and skills in this forum.
Or that the dmg is too high, if a thief fight without 30 Points in CS.

The different in the survivability between Stealth and Non-Stealth builds is enormous, exactly like the dmg different between a build with 30 points in CS (+ 25 in another) and a build with not more than 20 points in any traitlines.

Underwater have thieves no (good) access to condition remove or stealth and the traps and venoms weaker, than a cold.

This are just a few examples, it gives a considerable amount more.

You should spend more time in the profession balance forum. Lately, even stolen skills like WA and consume ecto get called OP, especially when we can trait to get them on a 21 second CD. Check out the nerfs wish list. There are links to these ridiculous threads.

Travlane.5948:

*skill 2 is unusable. skill 4 is rarely used (only on heals)…skill 5 is not used bc its 50% of your total init leaving room for 1-2 attacks before you need to run/hide/heal/regain init. *

PW kinda sux unless somebody roots/immobs your target or freezes them. i never lose against pw. i kind of prefer it to be honest…playing against it i mean.

the dmg is eh in spvp/tpvp but its gr8 in wvw …but in that sense PW isnt playable in WVW bc of the zerg style gaming. thief in general is no longer viable in any player v player sense…wvw tpvp spvp. you ALWAYS should take another class.

I put this in the main thread that PW is suffering from the nerfing of other skills right now, similar to the decline of S/D. Since thieves work on a global resource, they’ll always use the most effective moves for their initiative. #2 is clunky/cues behind other skills, #4 was indirectly nerfed with the stun/daze change so it’s severely less effective for the initiative, and #5 costs more initiative and doesn’t defend you against ranged attacks. One of the most effective ways to play it now is to keep evade frames up rather than necessarily react to the opponent. Nerfing the utility of PW will probably push players out of the set.

Thief main since 3 day head start.

PW might be slightly too effective, but I think the main issue is it’s suffering from nerfing of other thief skills. I’ll explain with the phases of S/D in my experience over the course of the game’s existence as an example (from an sPvP perspective).

S/D started off pretty well with all the skills balanced versus each other in the set. Tactical Strike was a good daze, IS was a good gap closer/retreat, FS (the original) was decent but slightly underpowered due to its bugs, Dancing Dagger had decent damage and situational use, CnD had utility and decent damage. In the beginning you had to use all the skills to be effective with the set, each having its own usefulness in certain situations. I don’t remember the exact order of the nerfs, but the result is the same, so it doesn’t really make a huge difference. TS was nerfed, but due to how stuns and dazes used to work, it just meant the duration couldn’t be pushed higher than 2 seconds. After stuns and dazes were changed, in conjunction with the revealed time increase and the CnD damage nerf in PvP, the setup to TS is not worth the time or initiative when other skills are cheaper, faster, more effective, and more damaging. Dancing Dagger had its damage nerfed way too hard without buffing the utility to make it worth spending the initiative, even after the reduction . 9/10 times I use this now it’s by accident. FS was buggy, but was a decent evade for the initiative. The utility was increased then decreased, and the initiative was increased also making it overall a less effective skill than it used to be. IS has been made extremely clunky and difficult to use reactively now that it cues behind other skills. I don’t play high level tournaments often, but I can almost count the number of times I’ve run across an S/D thief since the last change (including WvW) because other sets are just more effective for the effort.

PW and its problems are following the same pattern. Headshot got its effectiveness reduced with the daze change. Since IS is so clunky to use now, it’s better to keep up the evade frames rather than trying to actually play the opponent and getting let down by a buggy feeling skill. If you nerf the utility of PW rather than just the damage, it’s probably going to push people out of the set as it similarly did with S/D.

Mijo.3274:

Thanks to ALL for the feedbacks!
Sorry if someone got hurt for my sarcasm O.o

@Solori: the build i was using is something like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vgAQNAR8clknpRt1oxBNcrNSY6Rv9twJpQ1pukCejbA-TsAg0CnIqRVjrGTNyas1MsYZxGCA
Gotta admit it does a lot of dmg, but i dont like the fact that i cant control 100% interruptions, if i use my interrupt while the guy is not pressing any skill, boom wasted!

@Maugetarr: yep that’s the build, we’re talking about spvp, not wvw, and as you can see sigils and runes are not used in the build, simply because i dont remember wich one my enemy used.

@Rahar: Thank you! Yeah i always had problems with 30 shadow arts thieves, the problem here is that in my opinion is almost impossible to win a 1v1 against this kind of build if you’re running a full berserk build, not only mesmer i mean, i cant imagine a burst ele winning against this dp/pd thief (but personal skills>class balance, so i talk about players with the same skill level).
Of course if we talk about cantrip ele or PU mesmer it’s different, but thief always had problems with long fights.

Alright. I just don’t see where damage came from considering he only had a 4% crit chance and no crit damage and only access to poison as a damaging condition. It seems like it’s not made to tank either with pretty low armor. Runes and sigils can’t make up for the lack of condition variety and power that this build seems to have.

Edit: Nvm. Misread the second weapon set as something else instead of P/D. The problem is that he was actually a condition build which is pretty rough to counter on a mesmer. I think you might have misread the playstyle as well, because while his defense would have come from a 5+2 combo, his offense would have been a 5+1 sneak attack + autos from the pistol.

Substance E.4852:

I think the Necro was built from the ground up with the option, but not the need for minions. You could take them, but they also have other utilities that offset the choice to no use them. We don’t currently have anything to offset not using the pet. We could have it on perma passive and never touch F1, but our dps will suffer greatly and we will lose some utility. Any pet traits will have 0 use aswell.

To make us like the necro, we would need a major overhaul of all our non-pet utilities and traits to make a non-pet ranger just as good. This runs into the problem of pet users also getting massive buffs from the changes meant to make non-pet rangers viable. Any attempt to keep the two from making each other too powerful would be a headache to say the least.

Essentially it becomes an all or nothing deal. A modular ranger class just wouldn’t work. It did in GW1 but that was an entirely different system than we have now and Anet has chosen to be on the pro-pet side.

I don’t personally agree with their choice (minion classes are pointless in games with no collision and where melee is best) but they seem to be sticking with their original vision so it becomes an issue of accept it or invest in a new game.

I believe this is where my confusion comes from. I thought the scope of this CDI included rearranging/redesigning traits, numbers, and weapon skills to flesh out the class a little better. My thoughts were pretty much along the lines of redesigning with an optional rather than mandatory pet. You are correct though in that the traits and skills would have to be changed to a ranger first philosophy. An example of a decent trait that would probably be able to stay is shared anguish. Equipping a pet and this trait would provide a clear advantage without having to invest too heavily. Signets + signet of the beastmaster would have to essentially be reversed so that they affected the ranger first and traiting into them positively affected the pets: something along the lines of pets gaining all the same benefits of activating a signet (I.e. the active ability and other traits like beastmaster’s might).

Anyway, my views on it are “ranger first then pet” instead of the current philosophy of “ranger + pet.” It seems exceedingly more difficult to have to balance around an AI that they gave relatively little control over versus adding a little extra oomph to a class with a tiny secondary aspect. It’s not like mesmer AI which are designed to basically do one attack and then be easily killed, you have to make the semi-permanent AI be smart enough to survive and deal a significant (currently) portion of the ranger damage without doing all the work. Fine tuning the intelligence and balance of that AI seems way more difficult to me.

Substance E.4852:

Maugetarr.6823:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all,

Sorry I haven’t had time to comment in here. I went through the past 10 or so pages and tried to grab some of the issues that have come up and address them. The balance team has been keeping up with the thread, but they haven’t had as much time lately to comment on specific ideas.

Re: “Shot down” ideas

• The only thing we are not open to is a real permastow option that would essentially take away the pet completely (ie an option that said always stow).
  • We kicked around the idea of giving the ranger an “aspect of _______” which we moved to a new thread because it is elaborate and should be a single topic in itself. The idea is that it would give the pet more utility with swapping/stowing, but it wouldn’t retire the pet completely.
    • We want to fix issues with the pet AI and general usability before we consider doing something to this extent.
• We acknowledged that Pet AI does need help, but we did not say we would not be doing this. You will see some changes in the coming feature patch that should help with the pet’s usability.

Re: Lack of participation

• I apologize that I had been absent from this thread for a few days. I had to produce Ready Up last week and a number of other things came up that took priority (including getting a virus that meant I left early for the week). Also, I don’t work on the weekends.
• Just because we’re not responding doesn’t mean we’re not reading.
  • Sometimes we just don’t get the time to respond, but we’ll try to get better about this.

Re: Fear that we will only work on pets

• Don’t stress about this. We wanted to look at the class as a whole with you. We didn’t make this thread specifically to get feedback on the pets. It just happens to be one of (if not the biggest) the top issues with Ranger right now.

I didn’t read all the responses after this, so this might have been said by someone else, but why is a permanent stow option out of the question. I understand that the ranger is the pet class option in GW2, but they were also the pet class option in GW1, but didn’t require you to take a pet. It seems self limiting to impose that restriction (or rather force that aspect) on yourself in GW2.

Probably, in no small part, because it turns the Ranger into 2 different classes entirely. That means they have to balance them differently and would probably have to do a big overhaul of traits/weapons to make up for the damage/utility lost when we opt out of the pet.

While I’d opt out if it worked well, I can see this being a major hurdle that they don’t want to tackle.

This might be naivete, but I don’t see how it would be too much more difficult than balancing a MM necro or the like. It’s just a permanent add rather than a summoned one.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey all,

Sorry I haven’t had time to comment in here. I went through the past 10 or so pages and tried to grab some of the issues that have come up and address them. The balance team has been keeping up with the thread, but they haven’t had as much time lately to comment on specific ideas.

Re: “Shot down” ideas

• The only thing we are not open to is a real permastow option that would essentially take away the pet completely (ie an option that said always stow).
  • We kicked around the idea of giving the ranger an “aspect of _______” which we moved to a new thread because it is elaborate and should be a single topic in itself. The idea is that it would give the pet more utility with swapping/stowing, but it wouldn’t retire the pet completely.
    • We want to fix issues with the pet AI and general usability before we consider doing something to this extent.
• We acknowledged that Pet AI does need help, but we did not say we would not be doing this. You will see some changes in the coming feature patch that should help with the pet’s usability.

Re: Lack of participation

• I apologize that I had been absent from this thread for a few days. I had to produce Ready Up last week and a number of other things came up that took priority (including getting a virus that meant I left early for the week). Also, I don’t work on the weekends.
• Just because we’re not responding doesn’t mean we’re not reading.
  • Sometimes we just don’t get the time to respond, but we’ll try to get better about this.

Re: Fear that we will only work on pets

• Don’t stress about this. We wanted to look at the class as a whole with you. We didn’t make this thread specifically to get feedback on the pets. It just happens to be one of (if not the biggest) the top issues with Ranger right now.

I didn’t read all the responses after this, so this might have been said by someone else, but why is a permanent stow option out of the question. I understand that the ranger is the pet class option in GW2, but they were also the pet class option in GW1, but didn’t require you to take a pet. It seems self limiting to impose that restriction (or rather force that aspect) on yourself in GW2.

Umm… am I, uh…. following the right build link? I keep getting taken to a 0/0/30/20/20 build with only about 1500 power and 2200 armor using a carrion amulet. Is that correct?

WhiteRose.6934:

When Phase Retreat and Illusionary Leap (it’s not just Swap, in case you didn’t know) Are instant gap closers, and immobolize, and clear a condition, oh and have no cooldown, THEN we can compare the two.

And stop referring to swap as if mesmers can just use it at will. You summon a clone that has to actually find it’s way somewhere before you can decide to swap with it, in about 3 seconds. This actually requires a target, and line of sight at that. If you are even slightly out of range, tough luck enjoy your no clone and full cooldown. In no way is it comparable to IR. Sure, there are times that you might be lucky and manage to swap right as you got stunned, but I can count those times on one hand.

Phase Retreat blinks you away from a target, doesn’t break stun/immobolize. It just moves you. The cooldown is short, but not as short as 0 and certainly does nothing for conditions.

I have nothing against thieves by any means, but come on dude.

And the old SR, now IR, also moved you without breaking stun. Yes it cured a condition but the 2 were perfectly comparable which is why I thought it should be a template for how they nerfed IR rather than the way that they did. If you were to shorten the rollover time to 7-10 seconds and reduce the return range to 600 so that it would be comparable to swap and shorter range than Phase Retreat, it would have brought it in line with similar abilities.

Edit: As for the CD issue, its not exactly comparable, but traited iL/Swap gives you a 7.2 second CD where using IS/IR costs 5 initiative which is 5 seconds to regenerate that amount (asuming no other skill use). I believe, if I remember right, the initiative changes took place during the same patch, so before it actually took about 6.75 seconds to regenerate that amount, so I would consider the the 2 comparable in terms of CD even though direct comparison is difficult due to the different resource mechanics.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Illusionary Leap is not instant because the leaping clone must be near the target for the snaring to work, and it’s leap animation is fairly obvious. The leap is very unreliable as well and this skill can’t be used as a cap closer at range greater than 600. Then again, compared to IR + IS, this skill breaks a stun (but IS removes a condition) and has 2xleap finishers (while IR + IS has none).

That said, I still don’t know if IR is so UP compared to these two mesmer skills. It has greater range of 1200 and can be fairly easily used to teleport vertically, unlike swap or phase retreat (possible but not practical). When taken into context of both the initiative system and IS, IR becomes a very powerful skill.

It is also well known that s/X thief easily destroys any non bunker mesmer or elementalist and so I don’t think s/X needs a buff. IR could be reworked to make it less annoying to use, but something else should be nerffed to avoid power creep and increase of the strength of s/X weapon set.

Well, each has it’s strengths, and I don’t thing IR is significantly UP, just slightly underperforming for what the thief is supposed to do which is be slippery. When they changed it originally, I was arguing to make it more like swap by reducing the time the rollover was available and/or reducing the distance it could port you back (600). By doing those I thought they could have kept it in balance by making it comparable to the mesmer weapon teleports without outperforming either one of them.

On a separate note, iL needs to be fixed/debugged so that the pathing works better on stairs and over cracks and whatnot, but those are specific mesmer balancing issues. The reason I compared it originally is because I think those would be a good template for how an instant cast IR could be implemented/reverted.

Edit: I guess I did say “very”…. sorry for the exaggeration in my frustration for how the skill was nerfed.

Needs to be reverted back to instant cast but have the return range reduced to 600 (on par with the leap) and/or have the rollover time reduced to compensate.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Maugetarr.6823:

Before they nerfed it we made a bunch of suggestions of alternative ways they could nerf it (reducing the return range to 600, reducing the length of time the rollover was available, etc.) which were all ignored because the last balance patch discussion was more of a warning of what ascended weapons to not make rather than them wanting real feedback. This balance patch preview felt different and a different person handled it, so I suggested they revert it in that thread since it seemed like they were actually listening. You might create this thread in the class balance forum since it would get more visibility there.

+1 for reversion. Sword 2 is very clunky and UP compared to mesmer staff and sword 3 (swap is still an actual stunbreak fyi). I compare it to mesmer since they use the same type of magic and similar tricks.

Oh my god whahahahahahahahahaha xD. Inflitrators strike UP compared to swap or phase retreat? Really ? :P
Just in case you haven’t noticed, IS is an instant cap closer that also immobilises, does not need los and teleports you vertically. It is broken as kitten.
Still, I agree that the IR should be made back to 0 because it’s so terribly clumsy and annoying to use now. The attack itself however, should not teleport vertically and should have slower cast time so that people can react to it.

Sorry, I’ll specify. IR is UP compared to swap and phase retreat. iL might not give you the vertical movement and the clone from iL sometimes does weird zigzags, but swap is also instant cast, has a longer immobilize, has an actual stunbreak on it, and is available every 7.2 seconds when traited. Phase retreat can also be traited for low CD and has the added benefit that it can cause a warrior to burn adrenaline when used because they’ll connect with the clone. I’ll stand by my statement the IR is UP compared to swap and phase retreat, but next time I’ll use the name instead of “sword 2” to avoid confusion even though were specifically talking about IR.

Before they nerfed it we made a bunch of suggestions of alternative ways they could nerf it (reducing the return range to 600, reducing the length of time the rollover was available, etc.) which were all ignored because the last balance patch discussion was more of a warning of what ascended weapons to not make rather than them wanting real feedback. This balance patch preview felt different and a different person handled it, so I suggested they revert it in that thread since it seemed like they were actually listening. You might create this thread in the class balance forum since it would get more visibility there.

+1 for reversion. Sword 2 is very clunky and UP compared to mesmer staff and sword 3 (swap is still an actual stunbreak fyi). I compare it to mesmer since they use the same type of magic and similar tricks.

BobbyT.7192:

Am I the only one here that doesn’t want the thieves CDI to happen. By hour 3 I bet there will be 10-15 pages of “stealth op please nerf” -_-

Agreed.

There’s a few things that need improvement like bringing the effectiveness Acro up to the level of SA, but that’s about it.

Off topic: How is it a casual thief has incinerator?

On topic: Damage is fine. Add more partially digested husk style mobs if you want to promote more diverse teams in pve.

Specific Game Mode
PvP (since players are not stationary)

Proposal Overview
Remove most of the damage from pets. In exchange, rebalance all ranger weapon skill damage around the ranger doing 95% of the damage. Make the attack target (F1) rollover to call back. Make F2 and F3 both be controllable attacks. Maybe they can serve different functions then (say one is a damaging attack and one is more of a utility skill. Make these a ranged/leaping/AoE skill so they have a much better chance to connect. F4 can remain swap pets. Make stow pet keep the pet stowed, even in combat.

Goal of Proposal
Since pets don’t seem to hit their targets very well causing the overall damage of the ranger to suffer against players, this would move control of the damage back to the player. Pets could then be chosen based more on their controllable attacks ratber than hoping that it fills out the rest of the ranger damage. This would also allow for pets to be stowed and have it only affect some of the utility of the ranger. This would allow them to control fights against classes/builds like X/D thieves who can CnD easily off the pet. Make a keybind for stow/release pet and put a CD on it.

Associated Risks
Rangers might deal more damage by themselves. Pets might not even need to be used as you could have them permanently stored (similar to GW1 where you needed to equip an ability to use pets but weren’t forced to). This would minimize having to reprogram AI to hit and dodge better. Some of the traits would have to be redone since pets would be largely more utilitarian with some of them having spike damage.

Reflect pin down while on top of them for hilarious results.

If that improvisation one is true it’s going to become (or at least percieved as) OP pretty quickly and nerfed again. Imagine all of the deception utilities suddenly on a 35 (or less) second CD (well, at least shadowstep and SR). I can already hear the QQ. 20/20/0/0/30 steal builds perhaps.

Swagg.9236:

Despite that issue, it’s difficult to argue that instant-activation, passively-activated, ranged, RNG offensive damage procs should exist in a game without a dedicated healer/damage-mitigation class; and this game is replete with these sorts of attacks. And that’s just one issue, really.

I’m just going to suggest the crazy idea that this game is better suited to all the things you mentioned above specifically because there is no dedicated healer. If all the instant cast skills existed and players had no way to manage their own health, the healer would quickly be overwhelmed with all of the spike damage and passive procs…and forget about a team using a bunch of instant cast abilities from a couple of coordinated players spiking the healer down faster than they could react. The fact that healing/support is spread out and not the sole focus of a single character is what allows these mechanics to exist.

I would also like to add that this game is doing better than just barely working. Other than a few balance issues and some (occasionally large) bugs that (still) need to be addressed, the game is fairly well balanced as it currently is. With a few tweaks to PvE, like adding more mobs that were similar to the partially digested husks and improving mob AI, I think most of the classes would feel welcome/needed/useful in every game mode.

Form.8741:

But a dodge avoids only one or two attacks which you also are not dealing…and as soon as the dodge is over you’re right where he can see you and slam you.

Warrior is way too good at damage and condi reduction while keeping high power and pressure. Thief can’t hit hard AND survive like warrior can, and thief can’t beat this kind of profession most times because the tools just aren’t there (doing damage without taking damage and while being mobile instead of stuck in one place).

Before you mention black powder again, it was basically worthless because he just kept outside bp radius and always in range of me. That’s when he wasn’t immune to blind.

Building 15-16k health + 2400 armor in a thief = won’t be able to do enough damage to kill ANY warrior using healing signet. As soon as you drop crit or precision you destroy your damage output and make it so much easier for warrior to out-sustain you. This means you’re adjusting your stats in exactly the WRONG direction: In order to beat them you have to kill them FAST before they can do enough damage. They will ALWAYS recover faster and better than you and last longer, so you have to make the fight as short as possible.

And yes when they get low they ALWAYS run just long enough to regen way more than they deserve to.

Replacing 3 pieces of armor with soldier’s armor to get those stats isn’t exactly sacrificing much. Everything else is zerk. Those choices were made based on the “building a better D/D thief” thread which optimizes damage versus survivability.

I’ll repeat my earlier point though: yes dodge only avoids 1-2 attacks, but that’s 3-6k damage. If you waited for that to regen in stealth that would be 9-18 seconds. I’ll take my faster endurance regeneration over that timeframe because if you pair it with D/X auto, you get almost as good of regeneration as perma-vigor in addition to reducing the heal with poison (4 seconds every 2 seconds). In the short term (and even in the long term), the endurance regen wins out in terms of survivability, at least against a class with bigger distinct hits (rather than say a condi build).

Malforo.6391:

dont listen to maugetarr, no regen in stealth? okay might as well go full zerker

Well let’s look at it this way. Without healing power, you’re going to regen about 330hps while in stealth. The warrior is going to regen at a minimum around 397hps in that same time frame. If you stay in stealth for 3 seconds, that means you heal for 1k (half of an auto attack by the description from OP…. oh boy!) And he heals for 1.2 k while keeping pressure up on you. Instead, you could build about 15-16k health into your build and around 2400 armor to keep the pressure and poison up on the warrior which is benefiting more from your stealth than you are. I’ll say again, that 1 dodge more is worth 6-9 of stealth seconds based on the description of what the warrior was hitting for. That’s 6-9 seconds of no pressure on the warrior to cover what 1 extra dodge could have done.

There is a huge difference between not picking up the regen trait and going full zerk.

It may seem weird, but D/X autoattack is your best friend against HS warriors. You really need to keep the poison up as best as you can. For the most part I prefer D/D for the extra damage/pressure. Blind on stealth is pretty much requisite, and you need to drop stealth as soon as you enter it because that time off where you’re regening health in stealth, he’s out-regening you, which is partly why I don’t take that trait anymore. The one more dodge from going 0/30/25/15/0 instead of 0/30/30/10/0 can equal about 6 seconds in stealth if you dodge as little as a 2k hit.

Excalibur.9748:

it’s good, zerk meta needs to die

All they needed to do was add more things like the partially digested husks that you see in the new jungle worm world boss. Mix that new type of mob in with the old ones in dungeons and fractals and all of a sudden you’d have to bring a varied party to make it through a dungeon.

Razor.6392:

Anyway I love how thieves get all mad about this change. Shadow refuge outclasses every single thief utility and is pretty much a must have in every case.

SR is a good way to get yourself killed against decent players. Sorry that half of the thief utilities are buggy/useless. Maybe instead of nerfing one of the few decent ones, buff some of the others to be on par with it.

I haven’t fought a lot of them, but the ones I beat basically ended up with me charging in, dropping choking gas on the group, and spamming CB in between autoattacks. The weakness, AoE poison, and damage was enough to force the necros off the point or have all of their minions die simultaneously. Watch the necro (as best you can through the forest of minions) so you don’t get hit with dark pact.

Zero Day.2594:

Pretty sure you all are blind.
It is in fact good changes!

Instead of nerfing multiple skills in one patch, only one is being nerfed.
Instead of a giant nerf, it’s a small nerf.
Instead of nerfing crucial skills/traits, it’s a random skill that’s not really going to have much of an impact… (o.O did anyone see it coming? are we really going to QQ about a little poison duration reduction… compared to other nerfs we had…)

I don’t know guys, but I think it some good changes… Lol, it’s almost like you guys are expecting buffs to be handed out to us…

It’s funny in a sad way, but I have to agree with this. How long have we been asking for no changes (positive or negative). At least we know we’re getting close to not being nerfable anymore when it’s choking gas that’s getting nerfed.

Tldr: agreed it could be way worse than this.

Well, I think it’s still 25/30/0/0/15, S/P for trash, D/D for bosses but that’s if you can pull it off. It’s been a while since I ran higher-ish levels of fractals (30+), but 0/30/25/15/0 worked well for me, allowing the occasional hit to be taken without dying. The 25 in SA makes for pretty good might stacking against bosses, while it also lets you swap in master of deception so you can use SR and Smokescreen more often.

Vilkata.9078:

A simple yet seemingly outlandish solution would be to …. Blind the thief!

What the ehhh? You say?

Think about it. When you are stealthed and blind no matter how much you swing nothing happens, blind stays, attacks miss, you don’t lose stealth nor the blind condition… But most importantly, you aren’t revealed.

So keep the trait the same but have it also trigger a 1-3 second blind condition on stealth application only ( so if already revealed only enemies are blinded ). This guarantees you cannot accidentally reveal yourself. You get your oh kitten moment to evaluate your situation and get out of danger. Just a thought.

Wow. That would work pretty well actually. A 1 second blind would probably do the trick.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The problem with buffing the Healing Signet active is actually the other Warrior heals.

Can’t have it remove conditions, because that would cement Mending into never getting used.

Can’t have it grant adrenaline, because that would mean Healing Surge never gets used.

Can’t have it block attacks, grant invulnerability, or anything similar because that ensures Defiant Stance never gets used.

Truthfully speaking, not a whole lot left they could make the active do.

Lower the passive, buff the active, and put it on a shorter CD. Something like:

Passive: 300 hps (.05)
Active: 5,250 (1.0)
CD: 15 seconds

So it still has a decent passive (somewhere between pre/post buff), and combined with regen and adrenal health provides good sustain. The burst heal is decent and does nothing but grant a decent size chunk of health
in exchange for a window of vulnerability. Choices would need to be made whether to burst heal then go defensive for 15 (12) seconds, or to try to regen through that timeframe instead (which would be less than the active but more reliable). HS now also plays well with heal activations (lyssa and similar).

Numbers in this can be played with, these are just from the top of my head. I will say this though, with these numbers, the passive is weaker than the current passive by 25% (300hps), the active is stronger than the current active and provides a burst of 350hps untraited (11.8% weaker than current passive), and 437hps traited (10% stronger than current passive). Relatively speaking, it’s still a strong heal, but now there’s incentive to actually press that heal button (active play).

Ensign.2189:

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

You know, there is something that is bothering me. I could’ve sworn that, awhile ago, I did a comparison between a PVT build and a condi build, and found that direct damage did more damage.

This is the right way to compare skills across classes and specs. Your methods are good.

I question your choice of sample. Guardian sword has a pretty typical melee chain, but Necromancer scepter has a really weak ranged condi chain. When you’re comparing a weak skill to an average skill, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the weak skill is, well, weaker.

This is in fact typical. Skills are not anywhere near each other in power; some weapons have very strong skills, some have a bunch of garbage and 1-2 scary skills. If you just pick two skills and compare them, the results aren’t going to generalize, because the power of individual skills dominates.

You have to look at the whole set of skills if you want to avoid those errors.

I would have to agree with this. I also want to emphasize that in this analysis, the necro attack is 900 range while the guardian is 130. Ranged skills are typically balanced to do less damage in this game than close combat ones. An analysis of a physical ranged attack versus a condi ranged attack might be better.

DuranArgith.1354:

Cynz.9437:

DuranArgith.1354:

ramorambo.6701:

DuranArgith.1354:

remove lyssa runes. problem solved

That’s the easiest way to bring more problems due to condispam being able to destroy low hp class with few condi removals (thief in 1st position)

so giving them aegis, stability and protection while putting down a blind field and immobilizing/basilisk venom, making it really hard for you to retaliate, while eating insane burst, is not a problem in your eyes?

And all that every time they use their elite which has the lowest cd in the game?
you can leave the remove all condis in lyssa runes if you want. Its the boons that are the problem.

insane burst comes from ogre rune thieves…

Right… Because thieves need ogre runes to do decent burst.
[sarcasm]I also started pvp yesterday.[/sarcasm]

Im just going to put here that BV is actually a very mediocre “elite” on its own (1 second channel,1.5 second stun, warning on buff bar, single target, 45 second CD). Lyssa is actually more of an elite skill than the skill in itself. The only thing special about BV is its ability to trigger lyssa runes.

1. Ele
2. Ranger
3. Necro

Thief needs some minor tweaks, but the skill lock out on exiting DS makes necros a higher priority on the list.

Mordecai.6318:

Maugetarr.6823:

Mordecai.6318:

Maugetarr.6823:

Infiltrators return could be reverted I think if they reduced the return distance to 600 and limited tbe availability of it to around 7-10 seconds.

what in the actual kitten?

no.

no because?

Have you ever played a thief?

Yes and I don’t see why reducing the time the rollover skill is active to say 7-10 seconds would call that into question, especially when it would give back the instant- cast nature to the ability. So, instead of attacking me, why don’t you try answering this question.

What would be wrong with limiting the return range to the same distance as the jump range and also shortening the time IR is available?

(note: that is not adding a CD if that’s what you thought, and it would indirectly boost S/X’s chasing ability as the forward jump would be available more often)

Svarty.8019:

Karl McLain.5604:

Give examples: I had 2000 toughness but still got hit by X target for roughly Y damage.

I have 2852 armour but still got hit by backstab for 4,965.

Thief is simply broken and needs the mother of all nerfs a complete reworking from concept up.

Less than 5k isn’t actually very high for 2800 armor. Bunker status really starts at 3100-3200 + (possible) protection. This is as anecdotal as your story, but I average about 5-6k on backstabs, have hit as high as 8.5k and as little as 2k (bunker guard). Based on the possible amounts of bunkering that can occur in this game, backstab really doesn’t need a nerf.

Also, that was likely only a third of your health leaving more than enough time for counterplay. If it was more than 1/3, even though you have mid-highish armor, less than 15k health is pretty glassy.

Aegael.6938:

frans.8092:

Aegael.6938:

All your clever knowledge fails to take into account a clever thief.

Stealth isn’t free, C&D costs half of their initiative and needs you in melee range, while BP&HS uses three quarters of their initiative. They don’t have an endless reservoir.

A good thief knows ….

You’re fighting ghosts and in your mind you’ve already made them invincible.

I play a thief. I know exactly how the class works. That’s why I mentioned the cooldowns and durations of a typical field.

A thief can stealth on me, or a nearby NPC mob, or even just do a heartseeker leap combo. Then he’s in stealth.

I go into defensive mode and pop a moderate cooldown.

He instead backs off out of range of me. Then he restealths after his initiative is back at full and I’m down a cooldown. (Since 6 initiative recharges way faster than 30 seconds.)

This is called “resetting the fight.” The problem comes from thief’s insane mobility and his unique recharge system paired with the fact that he has stealth on his weaponsets. A ranger can’t do the same thing with Hunter’s Shot because they’re not as mobile, and that has a static cooldown rather than being able to be re-used at will.

Depending on the class I’m running at the time, I just eat the backstab and then cc or burst the thief to death. Just gotta be prepared with your best combo at your fingertips. Yes, I understand it’s risky, but I’ve even done it with my glass mesmer.

Anyway, just eat it without using any CDs then burn them after when the thief appears in front of you.

Zero Day.2594:

RedSpectrum.1975:

Ofc the warrior gets the best one, even if it is fake

Considering that and thieves getting a trap (remember ANet loves thief’s traps and venoms)… It makes it look legit, just the mesmer bit throws it off…

The mesmer one just shows that they watch too much anime

Wolf.5816:

Hey, whatever. The Engineer one sounds sweet. XD

But how is a Kit going to have a Cool down and still function as a Kit.. I question the validity of this source.

I expect there would be long cooldown, powerful skills within the kit, but you can switch to the kit any time you like.

Aegael.6938:

Oh, I do all those things already. It works wonders against stupid thieves, which are the 90%.

And I automatically lose against intelligent thieves who are simply patient and wait out my defenses, since I’m too used to fighting stupid ones.

I’m really just tired of “clever strategies.” You’re basically just assuming your opponent is bad when you throw skills out into open air. A stealthed opponent isn’t necessarily going to close to melee distance, etc.

In the end it just comes down to the fact that there are very few specs that can effectively “prepare” against a thief assault without throwing away very meaningful cooldowns.

Are you saying that 9/10 thieves you come across are pretty easy fights?

insanemaniac.2456:

snip
i think nearly everything here is aimed at personal vendettas and only half of the obvious of issues have found their way into his head, and he isnt even identifying, imo, decent solutions.

Exactly how it seemed to me with the thief thread, especially if you read the ele thread where he referred to thieves as a stupid evasive blindspam class without a unique function or flavor.

Mordecai.6318:

Maugetarr.6823:

Infiltrators return could be reverted I think if they reduced the return distance to 600 and limited tbe availability of it to around 7-10 seconds.

what in the actual kitten?

no.

no because?

Agreeing with Geiir here. Some mesmers melt instantly to me, and some mesmers know how to wait for an opening and spike you down hard. If you mess up, you die (at least from my experience playing shatter mesmer as well).