Guild Wars 2

No response, so I have to assume it was missed.

Since the last update I have been getting a strange bug with dazes. For some reason, whenever I get dazed, I am not just unable to use my abilities as it should be, but I lose control over my character completely, so that I just watch myself running in a random direction as if I was feared.

I can try and move in whatever direction I like, it’s just not happening. I am locked out of my movement keys.

It would be great if somebody could look into this.

I can provide footage of this bug, if needed.

The easiest fix for S/P would be to just remove the stun from Pistol Whip. You now have a self rooting evade (drop inititative from 5 to 4 to match Disabling Shot).

Very simple change with a very decisive impact.

For /D, it’s rather obvious that Dancing Dagger needs to actually have the cripple duration match the tooltip and secondly add a burning (though I read poison somewhere and I believe this to be another good suggestion by Ensoriki, if I am not mistaken).

I do feel like burning is kind of needed for any condition build of any class. The condition is just too powerful and classes who have no access to it, will always fall short. Poison, however, is very defining for the class, so that it should be present on more than just the main hand dagger.

Come to think of it, I would probably add burning to Dancing Dagger and change the Lotus Poison trait so that you’d apply poison for 3 seconds everytime you weakened your target rather than applying weakness everytime you poison it.

We could then put weakness on Body Shot as well, for Pistol builds.

Malidus.8360:

“An S/D thief can remove a total of 3 conditions that way and then he’s dead, as he’s out of initiative.”

Do you guys even read? Somebody was discussing Shadow Return as a means of constantly removing conditions. Shadow’s Embrace has absolutely nothing to do with the S/D weapon set.

You guys are also talking about hypothetical builds that nobody uses in Structured PvP. 30 Shadow Arts with S/D is like buying a mini cooper and trying to make a station wagon out of it.

I can see how you can complain about Empathetic Bond as a Necromancer, but Shadow Return as condition cleanse? Really? (This is basically a last resort move and definitely not a counter to condition classes)

An S/D thief can remove a total of 3 conditions that way and then he’s dead, as he’s out of initiative.

Arheundel.6451:

And based on what you make these claims? my claims are based on the common build run by s/d thieves, as the thief doesn’t show the build at all during the video, I can only assume you’re wearing a tin hat and using a crystal ball

It’s very easy to spot, if you know animations and effects. I know it’s a novel concept for somebody who likes to post more than he plays.

It’s also very easy to see that the thief blinds the necromancer every time he C&Ds. He has also regenerated a lot of health every time he comes out of stealth (30 in Shadow Arts with 2 initiative on stealth, blind on stealth and HP reg in stealth and no he was not using shadow’s embrace as I was reading earlier but instead cloaked in shadow, which is apparent at the very start where he enters stealth with a poison and a couple bleeds and when he comes out several seconds later, he still has them on). He also procs lightning strike repeatedly during the fight.

He then proceeds to root with Infil Strike and C&D off the immobilized target just to daze with tactical strike and auto attack till he has to retreat.

Arheundel.6451:

Med.6150:

Arheundel.6451:

of course…sword/dagger thief…signet of energy/ flanking strike spam/ infiltrator strike as spammable stun breaker..GG devs

GG ignorant. That guy didn’t even use flanking strike, nor was he dodge rolling or using whatever a signet of energy may be. That thief was using 30 in Shadow Arts with S/D and the only signet used was the Signet of Shadows.

First of all…chill out whoever you may be..I can’t use any names here unfortunately.
Furthermore I did a mistake, I was talking about sigil of superior energy, then the thief was spamming sword 2 like a “PRO”, now back to HoM as you don’t even know your own profession GG

I am perfectly chill. I called you an ignorant for the simple reason that you were displaying an obvious lack of knowledge on what you commented on.

You explicitely mentioned flanking strike (sword/dagger #3 fyi) spam, yet flanking strike wasn’t used. You mentioned signet of energy, which we now know to mean sigil of superior energy, and, to support my claim of your ignorance, wasn’t used either (the thief was using sigil of air).

Arheundel.6451:

of course…sword/dagger thief…signet of energy/ flanking strike spam/ infiltrator strike as spammable stun breaker..GG devs

GG ignorant. That guy didn’t even use flanking strike, nor was he dodge rolling or using whatever a signet of energy may be. That thief was using 30 in Shadow Arts with S/D and the only signet used was the Signet of Shadows.

I don’t know whether people understand that S/D as a set is much, much weaker in terms of survivability than D/P. All people see are S/D thieves with 30 in acrobatics dodging left and right. Guess what, you can spec 30 into acrobatics with D/P too. Try it and you will understand that the extra evade from FS isn’t exactly stronger than even a blind.

Having limited stealth capabilities, no blind and daze on demand, this weapon set needs to have that evade and it can not cost more than 3 (and still without the boon steal it would never have a shot), because else it’d not be in line with say Death Blossom or Disabling Shot (both evades last longer). The damage from larcenous, as posted above is pretty much up there with heartseeker and shadowshot as well.

If you take the boon stealing off this weapon set, there’s realistcally no point in utilizing it. Dropping it to a single boon steal isn’t going to shut up anybody either as it’s still “spammable”, according to some people.

Mrbig.8019:

Med.6150:

Stealth is definitely overpowered. It’s not invincibility, but it allows you to potentially be anywhere on the map seen from the perspective of your opponent.

Stealth allows you to regroup after a lost team fight and negate the other team the ability to scout and intercept, slow you down or apply pressure to you. Stealth also gives you the ability to initiate a fight and thus gain the upper hand, because your opponent can not guard both of their nodes with equal numbers.

For many this is accepted counterplay to a very strong position the winner of a team fight will usually find themselves in (being able to scout and react to an attack immediately or slow the enemy down from elevated positions while they are moving towards a node is very strong on many maps quite frankly).

However, being able to totally subtract yourself from the map and coordinate a full burst out of stealth is just beyond strong. We have a ton of abilities that deal instant damage and can be executed within half a second by multiple people. Mathematically right now 3 DPS classes can kill any target in GW2 before they can react (2 is usually enough for any target we see in tournaments). That’s why we are seeing more and more groups using stealth openers.

Now in my opinion stealth is important for some classes. For thieves and mesmers (less so imo) it is a defensive mechanic, that should not simply be taken away, especially in tpvp. Stealth becomes overpowered when it can be maintained for long periods of time (Shadow Refuge) or even permanently (smoke field + blast finishers). Stealth is also overpowered as an out of combat mechanic.

I would welcome two changes to stealth, but I’d already be grateful for one of them to be implemented, as I am not greedy:

1. Stealth can not be stacked

2. Stealth only works, if you’re in combat

PS: I play thief mainly.

the only really OP skill a thief has regarding stealth is shadow refuge.

Remove it and we’ll be happy.

My main is a thief and i agree SR is really OP, and one of the main reason why thieves are brought in high end tPvP: stealth assaults from the whole team are OP as kitten.

I was not specifically targeting the thief. Prolonged stealth can be generated without a thief as well. Shadow Refuge is part of the problem, but it’s not all of it.

Varonth.5830:

The problem is still, the initiative system. A hybrid of ‘initiative’ and cooldown would be much better in my opinion.
The problem with the initiative system is, that it not only allows spamming the same ability over and over, but it actively encourages a thief to do so. Since all skills share the same ressource, they basically battle for these ressources. If one skill is just marginal better, then you will just keep on using that skill, because why wasting limited ressources on something which does not do the job well.

The argument is sound, however, if we look at most thief weapons we can detect the following:

- There’s a prominent damage skill
- The other 3 skills are utility skills

The exception really is D/P with Heartseeker and Shadowshot being both prominent damage skills on the same weapon set.

So given this fact, I think that the issue goes beyond the initiative system and more towards the question “Why is it mostly more beneficial to spam the damage skill instead of the utility skills?”

Stof.9584:

Don’t forget to factor in:

S/D steals boons, so not only do you hit harder, the opponent just lost his protection and regen.
Besides, Backstab is burst/spike damage, while Sword has incredible sustain. It generally does way higher DPS in a longer fight.

Sword dealing more sustained damage than Dagger is a myth, which is based on the fact that autoattacks are slower and numbers are bigger. In terms of dps they are pretty much equal. Dagger Training will actually put Daggers ahead, that’s how close it is.

The main advantage of the sword is the cleave on the autoattack. Daggers on the other hand will leave your target permanently poisoned, which is quite strong.

Stealth is definitely overpowered. It’s not invincibility, but it allows you to potentially be anywhere on the map seen from the perspective of your opponent.

Stealth allows you to regroup after a lost team fight and negate the other team the ability to scout and intercept, slow you down or apply pressure to you. Stealth also gives you the ability to initiate a fight and thus gain the upper hand, because your opponent can not guard both of their nodes with equal numbers.

For many this is accepted counterplay to a very strong position the winner of a team fight will usually find themselves in (being able to scout and react to an attack immediately or slow the enemy down from elevated positions while they are moving towards a node is very strong on many maps quite frankly).

However, being able to totally subtract yourself from the map and coordinate a full burst out of stealth is just beyond strong. We have a ton of abilities that deal instant damage and can be executed within half a second by multiple people. Mathematically right now 3 DPS classes can kill any target in GW2 before they can react (2 is usually enough for any target we see in tournaments). That’s why we are seeing more and more groups using stealth openers.

Now in my opinion stealth is important for some classes. For thieves and mesmers (less so imo) it is a defensive mechanic, that should not simply be taken away, especially in tpvp. Stealth becomes overpowered when it can be maintained for long periods of time (Shadow Refuge) or even permanently (smoke field + blast finishers). Stealth is also overpowered as an out of combat mechanic.

I would welcome two changes to stealth, but I’d already be grateful for one of them to be implemented, as I am not greedy:

1. Stealth can not be stacked

2. Stealth only works, if you’re in combat

PS: I play thief mainly.

A backstab deals 60% more damage than a larcenous strike. Whenever you see big numbers, keep that in mind. 9k larcenous? That’d be a 14.4k backstab.

How often do you see 14k+ backstabs? Furthermore, the “evade builds” for S/D do not get anywhere close to that damage.

Looks to me like you are trying to justify bugs that favor you, jportell.

I actually misread your post because of the “stacking potential”. Upon reading it again I realized that your point was that you could benefit from the runes every time you were transformed regardless of how long a CD your elite and your heal had as long as you stayed within the internal cooldown. That means you can’t really stack lyssa boons, but it enables you to get the same benefit out of them as classes with elites and heals that match the internal cooldown.

Hence I had deleted my post, but you were quicker on the reply button.

Definitely a bug, but not as game breaking as one would think in my opinion.

Varonth.5830:

Med, you took Sigil of Air and Fire as and example, when you could instead pick Clusterbomb?

I was trying to point out the issue using an example that was easy to understand and reproduce for anybody who wanted to verify the veracity of it.

I mean, a thief could take pistols and even if the projectile would hit the target, it would deal like 1k damage. But it will probably get blocked by some random clone.
Or a nice 1200 range clusterbomb, for lol 5k crits on AoE.

I agree, I don’t think this is balanced either. Obviously there are more considerations to be made when comparing Pistols and Shortbows or say an Unload to a Cluster, but none of these would justify the the fact that AoE is pretty much as strong as single target abilities.

While the game mode definitely promotes AoE, it’s not the whole problem. People AoE, because it doesn’t come at much of a cost. AoEs should have a drop off based on targetkitten, when it comes to damage.

There’s a very obvious theme to current AoE abilities and that’s they will do as much or nearly as much as another ability. Just take a look at Sigil of Air and Sigil of Fire. The first is single target and the second is AoE. Sigil of Air deals all of 10% more damage. Why would you want to hit a target for 1650, when you could just hit multiple targets for 1500.

On top of that you will often hit people that are out of range for you, but if you proc a fire sigil off another target, your AoE will actually hit that target and pressure it regardless. The same goes for targets you can’t see but are still there.

You do realize that something that is blatantly overpowered has to be nerfed? That’s how it works.
If you buy smokes with a 10 dollar bill and get change for a 100 dollar bill, that doesn’t mean you can now keep the money or demand to at least get an extra 50 bucks to give it back, just because the cashier realized it a couple seconds after she handed you the money.

muscarine.5136:

Med.6150:

muscarine.5136:

On glassy targets in a very short time frame :
C&D+Mug+Air sigil : potentially ~3200 + 3500 + 3500
(BS+Mug+Air sigil, HS+Mug+Air sigil, etc)

These numbers…where are people pulling these from. You have never been able to hit for 3.5k from an air sigil (you might confuse this with the air rune proc, who knows). Air sigil is gonna hit for 2k on a glass cannon.

C&D has been doing 66% of the damage that Steal (Mug) used to ever since they nerfed C&D by 33%.

So in reality the numbers above would look like this assuming Steal would do 3.5k (and yes I know you could get much higher an I welcome any burst reduction to this game): 2.35k (C&D) + 3.5k Steal (using this as a baseline for the combo) + 1.75k Lightning Strike.

I’m sorry, what ? 1.7k air sigil proc ? Sure, i’m using S/D atm and not even built full deadly arts, i still proc it at 3.5k on the most fragile players.
2.5k C&D from a D/P or old D/D thief is really average too even after las t year’s nerf.

-edit : when i write potentially i’m assuming everything crits if that’s what troubles you with those numbers

No, because Lightning Strike from sigils can’t crit. I don’t know what you have seen, but it’s most definitely not Lightning Strike (from air sigil and not air runes; those two are not related) that’s hitting for 3.5k.

My numbers are solid, because they are not based on some magical random figure that I have read about. I took your 3.5k Mug pre-patch as a reference and calculated how much a Lightning Strike and a C&D would hit for based on their stat contribution relative to Mug’s. It’s as simple as that.

Reesha.7901:

Problem with that idea is, that shatter is a very large part of our damage. We don’t deal a lot of damage in between the shatters and as Jportell said: it takes us around 10 seconds to set up our burst.

Burst builds, by design, do not deal a lot of damage inbetween bursts. Yoou have the choice to stay in melee and deal more sustained damage, but since your burst is on such a low CD, you move away between bursts. You can also pick up a weapon like the Greatsword and deal more sustained damage from range, yet almost nobody opts for it, because they don’t have to.

Most mesmers are not melee all the time, and when we are using a ranged weapon, then our illusions are using a ranged weapon as well and will stay at their original position unless their target runs out of range.
Those illusions are used to shatter as well.
Now imagine how our shatter would work with your solution.

You are used to having all of your burst to hit. Most burst builds of other classes do not expect all of their burst to land all the time. If one or two of the illusions wouldn’t explode at your target, what’s the problem with that. Nobody keeps you from shattering before you have 3 illusions up either, but rarely anybody does. It’s mostly get three clones up and then do the full burst. That in itself shows there’s something wrong with how the burst is designed.

Right now shatter burst requires no decision making. You do not have to carefully plan on how many illusions you want to shatter, where they stand or whetehr your opponent is running away. The only way to actually counter the shatter is to dodge through the homing clones, whether you actually want to dodge into that spot or not (more often than not you will be in a very precarious spot after your dodge roll ends and totally out of position).

If you dodge away before they reach you, you just wasted a dodge roll basically, because they are still homing in on you afterwards.

Having your illusions shatter at the exact spot the player was when you activated the skill is a great solution. Certainly better than having 5-6 illusions on the battlefield chasing the target.

Alternatively, making it so that the mesmer could not create any clones, before the homing illusions have actually exploded, would bring some balance to this as well.

muscarine.5136:

On glassy targets in a very short time frame :
C&D+Mug+Air sigil : potentially ~3200 + 3500 + 3500
(BS+Mug+Air sigil, HS+Mug+Air sigil, etc)

These numbers…where are people pulling these from. You have never been able to hit for 3.5k from an air sigil (you might confuse this with the air rune proc, who knows). Air sigil is gonna hit for 2k on a glass cannon.

C&D has been doing 66% of the damage that Steal (Mug) used to ever since they nerfed C&D by 33%.

So in reality the numbers above would look like this assuming Steal would do 3.5k (and yes I know you could get much higher an I welcome any burst reduction to this game): 2.35k (C&D) + 3.5k Steal (using this as a baseline for the combo) + 1.75k Lightning Strike.

Eurantien.4632:

GREAT IDEA! This way my pets bleed on autoattack and 2 skills that put 4 stacks of bleeding on, and my SB skill where my pets next three attacks also inflict another bleed will also tic for 120 along with all my bleeds. 25 bleed stacks here I come. On top of that it will be IMPOSSIBLE to kill with 2k toughness….

This method will not work. People just need to learn to kite and learn to dodge and learn to apply protection. BM is easily countered and brings NOTHING to a team fight.

Actually, if you can stack 25 bleeds with your pet and yourself, what’s wrong with that?

It’s not even comparable to getting hit for up to 15k almost in a second by ravens.

The basic premise that your stats determine your damage and survivability with all the trade offs and the opportunity costs has to be established for the ranger class firstly. If the ratio between survivability and damage is then skewed towards any one direction due to the traits or weapon/pet skills, that’s something that can be tackled afterwards.

This change alone may not address the issue with NPC damage across the board, but just for the ranger and it is much needed.

Destiny.6738:

I’m not judging Med – but s/d will almost never lose against war…that’s just a fact

Join the duelling arena and you will be surprised how many times the warriors are besting the S/D thieves there.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

Assume you playing on a node: bunker guard will drop against S/D while D/P will drop due to retaliation.

As I specified above, I agree on this entirely. The S/D thief has a much easier time to kill the bunker guardian and if you scroll up, you will see that while I said the D/P thief can win, it’s too time consuming to be worth it, because you have to pay attention to retaliation, but also protection and CC when you time your offense.

Ele will drop against a S/D due to constant boon-remove, while he can mistform the D/P’s burst too easy and after that can heal up.

Again, if we are talking bunker Elementalist, I recall agreeing above. The pressure from a bunker Elementalist is not sufficient, so that S/D will eventually win. The Elementalist will drag out that fight by evading LS either with dodges or with CC and mobility. The S/D thief can not constantly stay on the target, because Infiltrator’s Strike can be interrupted by CC and thus not trigger Shadow Return or the immbilize. D/P Thief will take even longer, however it’s too time consuming for either of them.

Against mesmer an S/D will win EVERY battle, if we assume both are on the same skill-level

This one I disagree with. Staff and Sword + Focus have a good amount of survivability and CC attached to them, and a good shatter combo will put the Thief on the defensive just like it will the D/P Thief. As I specified though, I do think S/D has an easier time than D/P.

Destiny.6738:

EDIT:
@Med’s, last post
…neither against ele …in fact, s/d can win against most classes…

One more thing to adress the above. A S/D Elementalist has range capabilities that will pressure a S/D thief much more than a D/P thief who can stealth without a target. S/D Elementalist burst is instant and easy to hit, if you are familiar with the evade frames of the S/D thief. Lightning Strike, 2x Arcanes and a weapon swap sigil proc all hit while you are trying to LS him through a dodge roll.

The short answer is, I have been playing S/D since before the patch to be prepared for the changes and haven’t abandoned it since, except for one day in order to compare the viability of both.

I am very strong with S/D and a pain in the kitten for everyone judging by the opponents’ feedback. However, the same was true with D/P, though that was pretty much a given considering how easy it was to play (another reason why I am grateful for the “trend” and welcome any S/D thieves).

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

My guild ignored the meta pretty long. We kept playing without engineer and a d/p thief. And now we see the result.
The problem with S/D being so strong is that he is soooo much better in a 1v1 than the D/P thief. This means backcapping is too easy for S/D. A mesmer won’t stand a chance against this build. Ergo: S/D is also hard to counter. This generates hard pressure on your close-point. Much more than a D/P is able to do.
It’s not a trend. It has proven that S/D is in many situations harder to handle than a single-burst thief. Believe me. We nearly scrimmed against every top team in EU and I saw the difference.

In terms of 1v1 I can give you a short breakdown of how meta builds fare against S/D and D/P. Obviously skill level is assumed to be identical:

Bunker Guardian: S/D thief wins easily, D/P thief wins eventually (poor time investment here). How long it will take for S/D is largely dependent on how big the node is and how much CC the guardian has off CD

Bunker Elementalist: S/D thief wins eventually, D/P thief wins eventually. Poor time investment for both. Key for S/D thief is landing LS, while D/P needs to pressure in spikes and keep poison up.

Hybrid Elementalist: S/D thief can’t win. D/P thief is 50/50.

Bunker Ranger (BM): S/D thief loses eventually, D/P thief wins fast or loses just as fast. All in all S/D has the better chances, because even though we are assuming skill is equal and that he will lose eventually, he can drag out the fight and succeed with a clutch play, while D/P has to hope he dazes the heal before he runs out of initiative to win.

DPS Warrior: S/D will lose pretty quickly, as the warrior’s pressure is really high in melee. S/D is always on the brink of death in this match up, due to limited stealth and CC. D/P thief will win relatively easy. Blinds, dazes and stealth on demand, make it nigh impossible for warriors to keep up pressure and seem them always on the defensive. That said, S/D can win by baiting out important skills, but that should not be used as reference.

HGH Engineer: Both S/D and D/P will lose due to limited condition removal and the need to stick to their target. S/D thief wins, if he evades the right stuff, D/P thief wins, if he gets 3 good bursts combos off, without dying to conditions in the process. All in all in favor of S/D by a small margin

Bomb Engineer: Both S/D and D/P will lose. D/P has the slightly better match up here, because this Engineer build can outlast a single opponent for quite some time due to CC and good healing (this is usually also played with Rabid and thus higher armor). A couple surprising burst combos and critical blinds and dazes and the D/P can win, while S/D will have to retreat way too often and getting hit while doing so (no stealth) to keep the pressure on.

D/P Thief: S/D will lose. Both are very fragile and D/P can capitalize much more on that fact by being the initiator of every clash due to stealth. S/D is a sitting duck when D/P decides to stealth. S/D would have to severely outplay D/P to win and that basically means dodging blindly and track the evade spam to turn around and C&D off the stealthed thief then daze to pressure him. As soon as you add Shadow Refuge in the equation for D/P, however, S/D can’t realistically win.

Necromancer: Both S/D and D/P will win. D/P has an easier time due to blinds being really annoying for slow casting Necromancer abilities.

Mesmer: This one is really complicated. In my opinion Mesmer should win against both S/D and D/P as long as they run S/F and Staff. S/D has the upper hand, however, due to cleave from the sword destroying clones while pressuring the Mesmer. D/P can pressure harder due to stealth and higher burst. Equally skilled Mesmer should win as long as they do not try to simply i-leap -> swap for their burst. That’s so 2012 and way too predictable.

Yes, people follow trends, because somebody they look up to does too or because they see it work on them. Then there are those that read the forums and when they read “The meta changed pretty hard”, they log in and switch their entire playstyle, because they don’t want to appear to be behind the curve.

Give it 2 weeks and most thieves will be back on D/P for good. It just takes one or two people abandoning the new trend.

I do have to disagree with S/D being stronger than D/P to be honest. D/P is a lot stronger than S/D imo, because of stealth mainly (secondly because of the blind and daze). Stealth is not an invicibility, but it is a crutch and very hard to counter, because of the resources your opponent has to spend in order to attempt to counter it.

I don’t want S/D to be stronger, I think it is very strong already, but very few people play it well. I would like D/P to become harder to play and if I was the developer in charge, I’d remove the leap finisher from Heartseeker.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

S/D is definitely stronger in tPvP than D/P atm. Allone the fact that you can nearly win every 1v1, including bunkers, makes this so viable. Pushing on far-point was never easier. Even when the mesmer portals back, you can easy get him. As D/P it’s more about luck actually. The boon steal is the extra on top of it. Taking might away from engineers or protection/regen from guards is really strong. Beside that, the daze and immobilizes from S/D makes it hard to escape for others.

D/P is infinitely easier to play, which is why you see so many bad S/D thieves currently. In fact most have gone back to D/P, as D/P is actually pretty strong against S/D and requires no skill at all to at least be an average contributor.

1. Slice is not instant, tooltips are often misleading. It’s fast obviously, but it’s not instant.

2. Backstab deals more damage than Slice and Larcenous Strike combined and you would get dagger auto attacks just the the same (pointing out that both Double Strike and Wild Strike are labelled as instants just like Slice).

3. Steal/Stab is performed from stealth usually. If you burst from out of stealth, there’s almost no reason not to have a Heartseeker or C&D in there for extra damage (< 50% HP Heartseeker alone deals the same damage as a Larcenous Strike).

4. D/P has much better burst follow up. It’s impossible to kill people with a Steal/Stab nowadays, so that “burst” really means that you have to dish out as much damage as possible with 4-6 consecutive attacks at the very least.

D/P brings an even better daze, Dirame.

Sword damage per se (AA chain that is) is pretty good and buffing it in terms of damage would be a bad call. Thieves have bad traits for their limited selection of weapons, however this is in part because cool down reduction traits obviously can’t be designed for them (the traits for dual skills just scream “unpolished” to be honest).

Right now dagger and damage chains are pretty equal and dagger is slightly higher dps wise only if pick up the 5% increase in damage for it (that’s how close it is).

The biggest difference is the sword’s cleave vs. the dagger’s poison. I often wish the sword had a trait that made it apply poison, though it would come at a very high opportunity cost in my build. Likewise I wish the dagger had a cleave, though that might make the weapon overpowered at that point, unless you make it a tier 3 Trickery trait.

I feel as if somebody was trying to dump as much damage as possible into a weapon set that is clearly based on awareness, skill and deceit more than burst in an attempt to dumb it down.

Thieves have never had a hard time dealing damage, if they so chose, simply because of the damage increases/multipliers their traits offer. The build described above would pretty much just have you flanking strike a couple times and if you fail to kill your target swap to shortbow, till you can heal/SR.

It’s pretty much D/P with even less team support and I’d imagine anybody playing such a build would switch back to D/P once the feeling of novelty has worn off.

Warriors should receive better sustain, but under no circumstance can damage capabilities remain untouched, once that is done.

Reduce the damage potential, give them more sustain to survive, so they don’t lose an irrecuperable amount of hitpoints trying to get to their target.

GankSinatra.2653:

Dont forget they also want you to have the highest burst. Highest mobility and highest burst, an innovative and often successful design.

The mobile thief advertised above is very far from having the highest burst ability in game.

The original poster surely means Rush, as Whirlwind would make you evade any immobilize thrown at you anyway during its brief duration.

They should just split might into bloodlust and corruption. Problem solved. Professions that deal meaningful power and condition damage gain a lot more from might than professions who mainly deal only one or the other.

loseridoit.2756:

mention two cons to the focus. Not one.

Med.6150:

Mesmers have a very high uptime on vigor and every single dodge will summon a clone in this build. There’s no ICD on it either.

OK, which build are you talking about? Shatter mesmer dont spec in the inspiration line because the popular build is 20/20/0/0/30

I am going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not playing the shatter build you so eloquently quoted. Else you would realize that I was talking about Critical Infusion and Deceptive Evasion.

At most you only get 2 second daze if the person is lucky. Clones tend to shatter at the same time So basically, stacking up to 2 seconds is lucky. I trying to figure out where the 4 second daze come from

Illusions shatter when they get in range. If your opponent is kiting away to heal, which is when you want to shatter, the illusions will chase him and depending on where they were, they will arrive with some delay inbetween each other. The first daze will come from yourself, making it a potential 4s daze and multiple interrupts, just like I stated previously.

Shay.7534:

Your arguments are so skewed it’s becoming embarassing.
I know another class that doesn’t take any stunbreaker on their utility bar. Necromancer. Can you please go spam in their forums that they need to be nerfed because they don’t take any stun breaker on their bar ?

If Necromancers said that they need to slot a rezz utility to be more appealing to their team, they’d have much more of an argument. How many Necromancers do you see nowadays btw? They may or may not slot a stun breaker, but they certainly have no other way to deal with focus than using Death Shroud or their Plague elite. Necromancers are sitting ducks and everybody realizes that, so that they have to be careful and not get caught. The same is not true for the mesmer.

You haven’t explained why Infiltrator’s Strike is not on the “MUST NERF LIST” of the almighty Med. No other skill in game comes even close to Infiltrator’s Strike : spamable double port, immobilize, stun breaker , condition remover. Can mesmers get Infiltrator’s Strike instead of Blurred Frenzy ? I would be fine with it!

Infiltrator’s Strike is a very powerful ability. It’s however not a stun breaker, unless you have placed it beforehand. Yet, with all the stealth and a stun breaker on demand (again, you better have placed it before hand, because only Shadow Return will break stuns, Infiltrator’s won’t), thieves will still opt for more survivability in terms of an additional stealth and another stun break on their utility bar and still are more vulnerable than a mesmer. Thieves have no kind of invulnerability whatsoever.

And what every other glass cannon ? There’s 2 glass cannons that work in tpvp : thief and mesmer. Except shadowstep how does a thief invest heavily in survability ? Shadow Refuge is more of a team utility just like portal, even if you sometimes use it to save yourself. Mesmers use portal to save themselves too you know.

Thieves use Refuge and Shadowstep. If we were generous, we could say that portal (90s CD) is used as a semi-survival tool. So who is investing more in survival at this point? You decide.

Warriors? The few warriors that are left in tPVP bring only stability and that’s usually used so they can stay on target.

Warriors play glass cannons. They are running a shield in offhand that is nowehere close to blurred frenzy in neither CD nor effect. Warriors use Endure Pain and/or Balanced Stance. They do not have access to good survival utilites to pick and choose from.

Warriors are considered the worst class currently precisely because they have very low sustain and poor utilities. Warriors are a tenfold more vulnerable in their glass cannon spec than mesmers, even though they have much higher base stats for armor and HPs.

loseridoit.2756:

…. temperal curtain have a 25 second cooldown and the phastasm is nearly worthless in pvp……

Temporal curtain is one of the strongest CC abilities in the entire game. You make it sound like 25s CD is a lot for a ground target AoE pull.

Mind wreak require clones to shatter which means the mesmer have to burn the cd on other skills to use it…..

Mesmers have a very high uptime on vigor and every single dodge will summon a clone in this build. There’s no ICD on it either.

daze shatter dont stack duration……

Which is why I said “a staggered single target daze”. Have you ever tried healing through a full diversion? It will go like this:The first illusion will daze you for a second, you will stun break and heal and here comes the second illusion, which was running up to you interrupting your heal. Depending on how the illusions are converging on your opponent, you will get up to 4s of daze and multiple chances to interrupt a critical ability due to that, negating stun breakers used in the process on top of that.

i dont think you understand the mesmer……

Okay.

mesmer is pretty slow and average dps and great burst. people dont want to lose tournies you know. hgh condition engineer brings so much more damage support than a mesmer

HGH engi is currently considered too powerful. Regardless, HGH engis have no where near the burst, the CC or the survivability of the standard meta mesmer.

jportell.2197:

Med.6150:

Let’s give all glass cannons a 25% uptime invul in their offensive trees. Mesmers have the strongest utility skills out of all the classes. No other class comes close, yet the current meta sees none of the shatter mesmers investing a single utility skill to survive longer (they’d have access to 2 stealth abilities and AoE condition cleanse among other things, instead they just opt for illusion of life, portal and mirror images (requires target), that is almost never used as a stun breaker but instead to double shatter, so that they basically decide to run without a single stun breaker on their utility bar).

Every other glass cannon build outside of the mesmer will heavily invest in survivability through utilities in return, simply because they have to. How can any mesmers even argue that there’s nothing wrong with that?

The reason we bring iol and portal is teams require it… Leaving us with that one stun break… Basically if we don’t bring that we aren’t wanted on a team…. other classes can spec heavily into survivability without having to worry about what their team wants cuz their team just wants them to survive… see the difference? We would be more survivable if we didn’t have to bring certain utilities to appease our team… You kind of just made the argument as to why it shouldn’t be nerfed… Thanks and gg

Great logic there, except you haven’t explained why people wouldn’t take a class to their team that has great CC capabilities with staff, focus & sword (AoE daze, AoE immobilize, AoE pull, instant AoE burst damage on a 11s CD that rivals anyone’s, a 4s invul on a < 47s cooldown and a staggered single target daze for up to 4s). I am not even going into the phantasm damage that you get on top of that as soon as you summon them.

If you wanted to explain what a strawman argument looks like to everybody, you couldn’t have done a better job. Well done.

Let’s give all glass cannons a 25% uptime invul in their offensive trees. Mesmers have the strongest utility skills out of all the classes. No other class comes close, yet the current meta sees none of the shatter mesmers investing a single utility skill to survive longer (they’d have access to 2 stealth abilities and AoE condition cleanse among other things, instead they just opt for illusion of life, portal and mirror images (requires target), that is almost never used as a stun breaker but instead to double shatter, so that they basically decide to run without a single stun breaker on their utility bar).

Every other glass cannon build outside of the mesmer will heavily invest in survivability through utilities in return, simply because they have to. How can any mesmers even argue that there’s nothing wrong with that?

Blackhat.4016:

Here is short idea which came to my mind:

Instead of nerfing/buffing there should be a rework.

Imo the skill is based on terrible skill design. A spammable invulnerability skill with damage on top of it. It’s pretty obvious a lot of players will complain about that.

On the other hand Mesmers don’t want a good skill to be nerfed which is understandable.

Instead of relying on melee combat and invulnerability the skill should be ranged. There would be no need for invulnerability anymore and the Mesmer would still be able to deal damage without dying.

Problem solved.

Your suggestion is a good one. No mesmer is going to be arguing for it, however, as they are very much aware of the fact that they never engage in melee anyway and that they’d rather have a 2 second invul every 8 seconds to cover their bad positioning.

Gaidax.7835:

If you nerf Blurred Frenzy then you will have to compensate Mesmers somewhere else defense-wise, do you want more stealth and clones BS?

Don’t think so.

What’s the reasoning for buffing something else, if the skill is being adjusted, because it is overperforming?

Glass cannon mesmers have the most survivability of all the glass cannon builds, including elementalists and guardians.

Dest.7410:

Med.6150:

Take another class and use your burst out of range of the target. See how that goes.

Sigh… just in case you haven’t noticed, these ‘homing burst’ clones/phantasms can be destroyed with 1 (maybe 2) hits

So basically you want people to move into range of homing shatters and swing at one of the 3 clones twice. You realize they’d blow up in your face, before you could kill them, unless you had some form of power based range damage and nothing else going on on top of that.

Try hitting another class while they’re using their burst ability and see how that goes.

Trying? My mesmer will Blurred Frenzy any class that tries to burst me. Around these parts people call that balanced risk vs. reward.

In all fairness, you are hiding behind a reasonable facade while all you want is mesmer to be ‘easier to deal with’

In all fairness, you’ve yet to have anything going for you at all. You have no argument whatsoever, except the “we need to be invul while we burst, else we’d be warriors”.

Nowhere in that silly argument do you touch upon the fact that mesmers do not require melee range like warriors in the first place. You’re essentially a medium range class, that, if they happen to get caught by a melee, they’ll be able to invul up while doing damage to their pursuer.

So you don’t want to be forced to move into melee range, because you say warriors are suffering from that. Fair enough, but logic disctates that if you are not forced to move into melee range, just like you are not currently, you don’t need an invul with a 25% uptime and deals melee range damage.

No, Blurred Frenzy is 100% the reason you don’t see mesmers and go ‘Yum, lunch’ (pretty much as everyone views warriors now)

Again, you are not in melee range, unless somebody is catching up to you. You’re playing a 100% glass cannon (no idea if you do, I am stating this from the perspective of the general shatter meta build), you have a 4 second invul on a <47 second cool down, you have access to protection by whielding a staff, you have shadow steps, a full stun breaker and a semi-stun breaker on your weapon set. You have a 75+% uptime on vigor and you have multiple CC options on top of passive damage from any phantasms

No other glass cannon has so much defense. Yet you argue you also need a 25% uptime invul on your weapon skill bar. I don’t even care if mesmers are op or not, I am just handing you a much needed reality check.

Shay.7534:

First off – our shatter skills are NOT on a much lower cooldown then other professions. Learn the class before you start writing a wall of text with pure non-sense.
Mind Wrack : 15s by default, 10.5s with 30 points in Illusions

This is the kind of delusion there’s no cure for. How can you say your burst is not on a much lower cooldown and then proceed and discredit yourself in the same sentence. 10.5 seconds. There’s no burst mechanic on such a low cooldown for any other class. Let alone AoE, instant and target seeking.

Mind Wrack – indeed the bulk of our damage, but saying you can just cast it from range is a bunch of crap that only someone who doesn’t know mesmer can say.

Take another class and use your burst out of range of the target. See how that goes. When you shatter a target in front of you and your target decides to blink away right before your shatter goes off, your illusions will not explode, they will chase down the target and try to explode in his face, once they get there. On top of that, your Mind Wrack will also begin its cooldown the second you pressed F1, so that even if the illusions take 5 seconds to get to your target, you couldn’t care less, as all that means is that your next shatter will just be coming all the sooner.

The illusions have to walk to the target and explode. Casting it from range in a team fight is more or less useless as clones die till they get to their target from all the AoE.

Read above. Any other class doesn’t have their burst following and chasing the target, if they mess it up or the target runs away.

Blurred frenzy is the method that allows us to reliable mind wrack.

No, Blurred Frenzy is a crutch you’ve come to rely upon. Your MW from I-Persona is instant and has medium range. Too bad your own MW isn’t as smart as your NPCs’, so that you actually have to stand by the target your want to burst eh? And for that you need an invul, because as soon as you get in melee range for an instant spell, you obviously need to have an invul that deals damage going with it.

That’s kinda…distorted, don’t you think?

Mesmer is not Warrior to do amazing damage if they reach the target( which has a fail class design at the moment just because of this exact reason! ). We are a bit like thieves but with much lower burst, less mobility, less stealth and less condition removals but with survivability due to blurred frenzy. You want to remove immunity from blurred frenzy. Where exactly does that leave us in your mind ?
But you want to make it mini-warrior actively running around in melee range to kill ? How exactly does that work for warrior ?

I’ll be blunt. Read again what you wrote and tell me why you need an invul, if you are not going to be in melee range? You’re only moving into melee range to do damage with your invul ability, which only makes sense, if you actually would have to stay in melee range for dealing damage in the first place.

The sword has a root and a teleport + stun breaker on the #3. Even if the premise that every single weapon should have “some type of survivability” for mesmer would be correct, you’d still have it on the sword #3.

Currently, there’s no reason for Blurred Frenzy to make the mesmer immune not only to damage but also CC. Force the Mesmer into melee range to deal damage and Blurred Frenzy is fine. Given the mesmers shatter mechanic, I don’t see how you’d do that.

Tell me a single Mesmer that keeps chasing their target with their sword. Nobody does that. They stay away, prepare their clones, use their shadowstep + immobilize (swap) and then blow up their clones that are converging on your butt, while using their no risk invul skill in your face for some extra damage.

I am wondering for how long mesmers will be able to get away with the excuse that they have to be in melee range to deal damage just because they use a sword, which is why they need a 2 second invul on a 8s cool down in their opinion. That’s really nothing more than a weak excuse of an argument, as no current build forces the mesmer into melee range at all.
No mesmer will intentionally and purposefully attempt to stay in melee range of their target as much as possible like other professions using melee builds/weapons actually do. In fact, sword mesmers, actively try to stay out of melee range and only engage in melee for their invul skill (blurred frenzy). This is proof enough that the sword mesmer is not a melee profession/build.

By design a 2 second invul on an 8s CD is very questionable already. Considering no other mitigating circumstances, it’s obviously grossly overpowered. There are, however, factors that could actually justify such a high uptime in evasion. If the mesmer was a fragile profession (it’s not the most fragile, but I’d say it’s fragile, so we’ll check this prerequisite) that relied heavily on maintaing melee range in order to deal its damage (currently absolutely false as shown above), then some form of defense like “Blur” would be warranted.

So given that, in my opinion there are 2 ways to balance the weapon:

1. Remove the invul from Blurred Frenzy, as the main bulk of damage a sword mesmer currently deals is not putting him in harms way ever. It’s ranged damage through shatters and the melee damage from the very same invul skill that is meant for the class to be able to stay in the fray (this is basically as if you added damage to endure pain and rifle warriors would charge in with endure pain to deal damage with it).

2. Move some of the shatter damage to the sword skills, so that the sword mesmer needs to seek out melee range actively to deal damage. In return Blurred Frezy could remain as it is, in order to allow a fragile class to stay in the fray

It is kind of odd that no matter what weapons the mesmer class uses, its main damage source originates mostly from its f-skills. These f-skills are instant and on a much lower cooldown than any other classes “burst skills”.

Now, there will be technical difficulties in moving some of the shatter damage to the sword as proposed above, because you can’t lower the shatter damage for swords specifically (I am aware that weapon damage factors into the damage, but you are neither forced to shatter with your sword and can just swap weapon before you do, nor is the difference worth mentioning).

In the end I believe that the invul on Blurred Frenzy will have to go, unless shatter damage is revisited and stops being the cornerstone of every single weapon set.

All P/P needs is mobility. However, the P/P set can be quite bursty for a range weapon, so that any added mobility needs to be implemented carefully.

I suggest to add an effect to Body Shot that gives a 600 range shadowstep with target requirement (if you fail to connect, you will still be ported 600’ towards your target. That way you can move between nodes faster, provided somebody on your team marks an opponent, but you still don’t become overly slippery, since the range damage would be too high for that kind of evasion.